Trigger Windows Update in ConfigMgr without PowerShell

I've been meaning to share this blog post for some time now, and finally got around to it. If you need to trigger a Windows update without using PowerShell, there is a way to do it. In newer versions of Windows 10, usoclient.exe is used to initiate an update scan. However, most of its parameters no longer work except for startinteractivescan. The issue I faced was that it had to be executed as the system account or as the end user in ConfigMgr. Although ConfigMgr runs installations with the system account, it did not work with usoclient.exe. The solution was to use psexec.exe with the -s parameter to trigger it. I ran it as a task sequence, but you can also execute it under a package. I had already pushed psexec.exe to all systems in my environment, but you may need to include it in the package and run it from there. Don't forget to use the -accepteula parameter; otherwise, it will hang if it has never been executed on a machine before.

If you observe the Check for Updates window while executing the package in Software Center, you can see it initiate the update scan, as demonstrated below.