March 9, 2021 Security Updates failed to install on Windows Server 2016 servers

Question

We patched all our servers yesterday and all updates installed fine on our 2012 and 2019 servers, but every one of our 2016 servers failed to install any of the 3 updates (cumulative, stacking from Feb 2021, and another smaller server update). The download/install from Windows Update would get to 21% and hang. I tried rebooting one of the servers and installing the updates manually, but they get stuck on Copying packages to the Windows Update cache... I also tried stopping the WU service, deleting the SoftwareDistribution folder under c:\windows but that did not help either. Any solutions or workarounds?

Answer 1

On your Server 2016 computers, refer to this document to Reset Windows Update components manually
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/update/windows-update-resources
Then, manually install the latest SSU from catalog
https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=KB5001078
Restart.
Just Manually install the latest CU is enough, March 18 2021—KB5001633 is the latest CU for Server 2016.
In general, Server 2016 update process seems to be slower than server 2019 in my experience, Please be patient.

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