SOLVED: Windows Update Stuck at 0% Downloading When Using WSUS

If you have a Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) server and you find some of the PC’s on your network are showing updates stuck at 0% Downloading, the problem may be with the WSUS server.

After performing all the usual fixes for WSUS (restarting WSUS and BITS services, reboot, SERVER CLEANUP WIZARD, scripts to fix WSUS SQL…), I called Microsoft Tech Support and worked with “Neha B.”.  We found that the WSUS server had a single update that it could not source from Microsoft.  The question then, was how to figure out which update was stuck out of the thousands of updates on the WSUS server.

The solution was to:

1. expand UPDATES > ALL UPDATES,
2. right click on the header bar and select FILE STATUS,
3. click on FILE STATUS to sort the patches
4. Scroll to the very top and then the very bottom to see which updates have a red X on them
5. Right click on each problem update and select DECLINE

In my case the problematic update had been superseded but WSUS was still trying to download the old update.