Windows Update Error 0x80244022 and WsusPool Memory Limit

At one of my customers, I have faced a very interesting problem related to the installation of updates on the clients running Windows 7. The updates are distributed via WSUS server integrated into System Center Configuration Manager (more precisely Software Update Point – SUP). The SCCM server is running Windows Server 2008 R2, the WSUS version is WSUS 3.0 SP2, respectively. Client PCs running Windows 7 SP1 (about 2,000 computers) have to be updated.

Client computers cannot get updates from Software Update Point, the error 0x80244022 appears in the logs.

Client-side WUAhandler.log contains the following errors:

OnSearchComplete - Failed to end search job. Error = 0x80244022.
Scan failed with error = 0x80244022.

WindowsUpdate.log also has a number of errors, like:

2017-11-11 14:25:41:271 612 4858 Setup WARNING: SelfUpdate check failed to download package information, error = 0x80244022
2017-11-11 14:25:41:271 612 4858 Setup WARNING: SelfUpdate check failed to download package information, error = 0x80244022
2017-11-11 14:25:41:271 612 4858 Agent * WARNING: Skipping scan, self-update check returned 0x80244022
2017-11-11 14:25:41:271 612 4858 Agent * WARNING: Exit code = 0x80244022
2017-11-11 14:25:41:271 612 4858 Agent WARNING: WU client failed Searching for update with error 0x80244022
2017-11-11 14:25:41:271 612 4abc AU # WARNING: Search callback failed, result = 0x80244022
2017-11-11 14:25:41:271 612 4abc AU # WARNING: Failed to find updates with error code 80244022


Server-side WSUSCtrl.log shows this error:

The request failed with HTTP status 503: Service Unavailable
Failures reported during periodic health check by the WSUS Server SCCM-SRV1. Will retry check in 1 minutes


I. e., the WSUS site doesn’t respond. Indeed, if you open the URL address of WSUS Administration (http://SCCM-Srv1:8530), this error will appear:

HTTP Error 503. The service is unavailable

After opening IIS Manager, I saw that the pool responsible for WSUS (WsusPool) is stopped.

After starting it manually, it fall again in 20-30 minutes. In the system log, an interesting entry appeared under Event ID 5117 WAS:

A worker process serving application pool ‘WsusPool’ has requested a recycle because it reached its private bytes memory limit

By default, the limit of WsusPool memory is 1.8 GB. If it is exceeded (it can happen if there are a lot of WSUS clients, particularly, at the first scan), the pool is reset. To understand, how much memory your pool is using, it’s enough to look at w3wp.exe process. If the limit of 1.8 GB is exceeded, the process is restarted. Thus, to solve this problem, you have to increase the amount of allocated memory.

You can do it in the IIS Manager, select Application Pools and right-click WsusPool -> Recycling, then enlarge the value in the Private memory usage (in KB) field.

It’s up to you to decide how much you increase it, but I recommend to start from 3-4 GB. In my case, 6 GB was enough for 2,000+ WSUS clients.

The size of allocated memory can also be changed in the Advanced Settings of the pool by increasing the value in the Private memory usage (KB) field.

Now restart the pool using Start/Stop or Recycle buttons.

After that w3wp.exe stopped consuming over 3 GB of RAM. The next day the computers began to get updates.

It is also recommended to install the following updates for WSUS 3.0 SP2 in Windows Server 2008 R2:

1. KB2720211
2. KB2734608

And these ones for WSUS 4.0 in Windows Server 2012 R2:

• KB2919442
• KB2919355
• KB3095113
• KB3159706