Manually Removing WSUS 3.0

if you find your WSUS 3.0 gets corrupted you may need to uninstall and reinstall it. I have noticed that depending on the corruption it may not be as easy to do this as first it looks

The following steps have helped me manually strip WSUS 3.0 (inclsp1 and sp2 updates) from the system when simple Add/Remove Programs wont work.

1. Download the SDK to obtain MSIZAP
http://download.microsoft.com/download/e/9/d/e9d80355-7ab4-45b8-80e8-983a48d5e1bd/msicuu2.exe

2. From a command prompt, type:
MSIZAP T {2C0D7E35-EE6E-4DC7-BA13-2C68AEDEB59D}

3. From a command prompt, type: sc delete wsusservice

4. Again, From a command prompt, type:
MSIZAP T {2C0D7E35-EE6E-4DC7-BA13-2C68AEDEB59D}

5. From a command prompt, type: iisreset

6. Run the following command to delete Windows Internal Database:

msiexec /x {CEB5780F-1A70-44A9-850F-DE6C4F6AA8FB} callerid=ocsetup.exe

7. Open IIS manager, delete all WSUS related virtual directories:

ApiRemoting30
ClientWebService
Content
DssAuthWebService
Inventory
ReportingWebService
Selfupdate
ServerSyncWebService
SimpleAuthWebService

8. Delete WSUS folder C:\Program Files\Update Services

Some other hints:

• you may want to try uninstalling the “Windows Internal Database” from Add/Remove Programs first – I always to this as well
• you may leave your WSUS main content/download folder intact – during the reinstall make sure you point WSUS to the right folder for your content – this saves downloading GBs of updates again
• I found when deleting the “Program Files” folder some DLLs were in use – I just ignored and the WSUS reinstallation went through fine, even wihtout a reboot