Cancel downloaded updates in Windows Server

If the server has downloaded automatically an update (such as the SharePoint ones), which you don’t want to install, try following these steps to delete the queue:

• Open an elevated PowerShell, then run the following command

Stop-Service -Name "wuauserv"

• Open an elevated PowerShell, then run the following commands to make a backup of the folders we’re going to delete.

cd C:\

'backupwinupdate', 'backupdatastore' | %{New-Item -Name "$_" -ItemType "Directory"}

Copy-Item -Path "C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download" -Destination "C:\backupwinupdate" -Recurse
Copy-Item -Path "C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\DataStore" -Destination "C:\backupdatastore" -Recurse

• Check that the backup has been created, then proceed to delete the content of the original folders:

Get-ChildItem -Path “C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download” -Include * -File -Recurse | foreach { $_.Delete()}

Get-ChildItem -Path “C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\DataStore” -Include * -File -Recurse | foreach { $_.Delete()}

• After clearing the content, you can proceed to start Windows Update:

Start-Service -Name "wuauserv"

You’ll need to reboot at the end of this procedure.

Be sure to clean up the backup folders C:\backupwinupdate and C:\backupdatastore