For IT professionals managing WSUS, the pre-holiday rush often means juggling critical IT responsibilities with tedious WSUS maintenance. But what if you could automate it? This Christmas, gift yourself true peace of mind with WAM, swap stress for simplicity, and...
WSUS is a powerful and cost-effective tool for managing Windows updates. However, keeping WSUS running at its best requires a lot of maintenance. This can quickly overwhelm IT professionals who are already juggling countless responsibilities. Enter WAM, a software...
The Windows 11 version 24H2, also known as the 2024 Update for Windows 11 was made available for all at the beginning of this month. It marks the start of 36 months of support for Enterprise and Education editions and 24 months for Home and Pro editions. The Windows...
Key Points: WSUS is not end of life. It is end of development and has been officially deprecated. Windows Server 2025 includes WSUS as a role and will be supported until at least the end of support for Windows Server 2025 which will take us to 2035. Microsoft’s...
Microsoft has recently announced its plan to deprecate WSUS (Windows Server Update Services) driver synchronization, a helpful feature that IT administrators have used to manage and distribute driver updates across their networks. This decision has stirred discussions...
Keeping your organization's network secure and up-to-date requires constant vigilance. Patching software vulnerabilities is a crucial defense against cyberattacks, but managing updates across numerous devices can be a daunting task. Windows Server Update Services...
We're excited to announce the release of WAM 2024.07, packed with improvements designed to streamline your WSUS maintenance experience. This update tackles bugs, introduces new functionalities, and enhances existing features. Let's dive into the details: Bug Fixes:...
Keeping your organization's computers up-to-date with the latest security patches is crucial. While Microsoft offers automatic updates, WSUS (Windows Server Update Services) provides IT administrators with greater control and flexibility over the patching process....
Keeping your WSUS system running smoothly is essential for ensuring your organization's devices are up-to-date and secure. However, misconfigurations and errors can cause problems that can lead to disruptions in service. This is where WAM comes in. How WAM Can Help...
If your company's WSUS server, tasked with keeping our devices secure and up-to-date, has unfortunately fallen into disarray and you’re the one responsible for restoring it, what can you do? Even if you’re no WSUS wiz, we can help you whip your server back into shape!...
WSUS doesn’t do a very good job of keeping itself clean. Yet, it needs to be clean and well-maintained in order to perform optimally. That’s why WSUS maintenance is absolutely essential. Fortunately, there are tools, like WAM, that can help fill in the gaps and keep...
In the realm of Windows Server Update Services (WSUS), ensuring smooth functionality is a critical task for IT administrators. Enter WSUS Automated Maintenance (WAM), a groundbreaking solution. WAM, previously referred to as the Adamj script, is more than just a...
It’s that time again! Time to upgrade to the newest version of WAM so your WSUS maintenance stays as easy and breezy as can be. Here’s a summary of what’s new with the latest version of WAM. Features Some big feature changes include: Feature: Added support for using...
Windows 11, version 23H2, also known as the Windows 11 2023 Update, is now available through Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) and Windows Update for Business. With Microsoft’s release of the Windows 11 Moment 4 Update comes 150 new features. It’s a cumulative...
KB stands for “Knowledge Base”. It’s a repository of articles that explain issues affecting Windows and other Microsoft products. Each security update begins with “KB” and refers to a specific Knowledge Base article. Each KB contains a number of updates and patches....
Have you ever experienced a WSUS server that’s too bloated and won’t operate? Troubleshooting WSUS (Windows Server Update Services) database bloat can help you optimize the performance of your WSUS server and save storage space. There are some best practices and some...
Do you use WSUS to update your devices? Then this is for you. Microsoft has announced that the process of importing updates into WSUS has changed. Synchronizing updates in WSUS is not changing. This new way is only for the manual import (if needed) of optional preview...
At AJ Tek, we deeply understand the stress and frustration that WSUS maintenance and upkeep can cause. Over time, it can wear away at you, gnawing at your passion for IT. WSUS maintenance can steal so much of your time and resources. But, it doesn’t have to be that...
If you’re not totally sure what WSUS is or means, you’re in the right place. Maybe you haven’t yet experienced it or maybe you’re just starting out in the world of IT. In this article, we’ll break down what exactly WSUS is, how it works, and how best to maintain it....
As IT professionals and system admins continue to discover WAM and its incredible utility, AJ Tek continues to update and enhance it so it’s better for everyone. We are thrilled to announce the release of the latest version of WAM - WAM 2023.07. Packed with new...
If you’re still doing WSUS maintenance manually, we have one question for you: why? We have the solution that automates these tasks so you can focus on bigger, more important things. If you’re considering WAM but still aren’t sure, we’ve laid out all the WSUS...
We are excited to announce that we have added Bitcoin as a payment option for WAM. As a growing number of our customers have expressed an interest in using cryptocurrency, we wanted to make sure that we could offer this convenient and secure payment option to all our...
Some people, perhaps like yourself, might be unaware that WSUS maintenance is needed. You can’t just set it up and pretend it doesn’t exist. If you don’t regularly clean and maintain your WSUS, you’ll notice performance issues with the server. We’ll go over the...
Quality updates are coming on March 28 for on-premises Windows 11, version 22H2 devices. The updates are coming via the Unified Update Platform (UUP) which interoperates with WSUS and Microsoft Configuration Manager. UUP quality updates are cumulative, including all...
When configuring WSUS, you can consult Microsoft’s best practices. This will guide you through what to tune in WSUS. Still, there are different approaches to building and maintaining a WSUS Server, and overall, the situation can be rather complicated. That’s why WAM...
Microsoft patch management is an essential aspect of keeping your organization’s computer systems secure and up to date. However, many organizations fail to take this task seriously, leaving their systems vulnerable to security threats and other issues. To this day,...
Another one! Here we are, 8 years from our launch and heading into 2023, still making WAM even better. With this update, we continue to save you time and frustration by improving WAM once again to make it even more user-friendly and efficient. WAM 2023.01 also comes...
You probably already know that backing up your Windows Server Updates Services is crucial. You want to back up because restores are faster than rebuilding WSUS. Although it’s not difficult to rebuild, it takes valuable time we know you don’t have. Your WSUS...
You probably already know that backing up your Windows Server Update Services is crucial. You want to back up because restores are faster than rebuilding WSUS. Although it’s not difficult to rebuild, it takes valuable time we know you don’t have. Your WSUS...
On this most recent Patch Tuesday, Microsoft announced the release of a new Windows 11 Update, formally known as Windows 11 22H2. In addition to their plans to release Microsoft 10 22H2 in a month’s time, several aspects and features of the new Windows 11 update have...
This summer, Microsoft has released a new Unified Update Platform, or UUP, that allows commercial customers to have on-premises update management capabilities. Unified Update Platform was designed to simplify and streamline Windows 11 and its upgrades by enhancing...
Adam Marshall, president of AJ Tek and creator of WSUS Automated Maintenance © has been honoured with the title of a Microsoft MVP! This prestigious title was awarded to him for his work and contribution to the “Windows and Devices for IT” MVP category. 2022 is the...
In 2015, WAM was launched as a user-friendly and time-saving program to help our customers by performing WSUS automated maintenance. While the first version of WAM was a hit, we didn’t stop there. At AJ Tek, we’re constantly evolving WAM to make it better and more...
Maintaining your WSUS is a necessity in any server, as it ensures your system’s storage is not taken over by unnecessary, old, or superseded updates, keeps your system running smoothly, and helps your server to stay up-to-date through new Microsoft updates that are...
To celebrate this year’s May the fourth, we here at AJ Tek have been looking into what Star Wars would have been like if a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, they’d had WAM to automate their WSUS Automated Maintenance. The outcome could have been quite...
While managing WSUS (Windows Server Update Services)--especially when it comes to an SCCM (System Center Configuration Manager) environment, it’s vital that you as a business administrator remain on top of the maintenance tasks to ensure that your server and all of...
Many Windows users are already familiar with Patch Tuesday to a certain extent. The average user may understand the frequency of Microsoft updates, and the expectation to install the new patches to their servers, but perhaps they lack knowledge regarding why and how...
Throughout the past few years, Microsoft has been slowly and steadily reducing the size of the downloads for their monthly Patch Tuesday releases. As WSUS updates continue to become smaller, this has seemed to culminate with the release of Windows 11 in which WSUS...
Since our initial launch in 2015, AJ Tek has continued to change and evolve as our users and their working relationships with their computers have as well. This past year, as millions of individuals have been operating their workplaces and business from home, computer...
On October 5th, 2021, Microsoft released their newest operating system: Windows 11. While Windows 11 is more aptly considered a reworking of Windows 10, it did come with stricter-than-usual hardware requirements and several changes (most notably a change in aesthetic...
The main purpose of a WSUS (Windows Server Update Services) administrator is to manage incoming Microsoft updates to then be installed on Windows servers. While WSUS administrators handle the process of managing and organizing new updates, they may not have the...
I've successfully in-place upgraded a WSUS/PDQ Deploy/PDQ Inventory server from Server 2012 > Server 2012R2 > Server 2019 > Server 2022. It is a VM that is appropriately sized for the 3 roles that it has. Caveats with WSUS: After the in-place upgrades, you...
Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) has been a trusted tool relied on by many system administrators to manage Windows updates from 2005 on. Since Microsoft released WSUS to supersede Software Update Services (SUS), it has been helping businesses with their system...
Installing new software can be daunting when you're not familiar with it, so here's our step-by-step guide to installing WAM onto your server!
In the past, it has been easy to dismiss WSUS cleanup, especially regarding its use for SCCM. Once upon a time, there wasn’t a huge need to interfere with the WSUS system behind SCCM, as we usually just assumed that the SCCM settings would take precedence over it, and...
If your WSUS is taking up too much space on your server, it can seem like a very frustrating and daunting task to try to clear it out efficiently. As you likely know, running out of space on your server can lead to slower operation with less priority on what’s...
Here at AJ Tek, we are extremely proud of the work we’ve accomplished in creating our WSUS Automated Maintenance (WAM) software. System administrators and IT professionals around the world have been using and enjoying our software since we first released it publicly...
Microsoft has officially announced that Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) 3.0 Service Pack 2 (SP2) users will no longer be able to synchronize and download updates starting on October 31, 2021. While this may be a surprise to some, the writing has been on the wall...
As we all know, the Windows operating system releases updates to help protect your system from security issues fairly regularly. Occasionally though, you may run into unexpected errors when trying to download a Windows 10 update using your Windows Server Update...
Here at AJ Tek, we like to keep our customers in the know when it comes to major changes to not only our WSUS Automated Maintenance (WAM) software, but the WSUS and Windows world in general! One such major announcement that we want to focus on is that Adobe, a trusted...
Recently, Microsoft officially changed how they would be delivering updates to certain parts of Windows 10 and Windows Server that receive and install Windows Update files. This new method of bundled Windows updates is said to eliminate confusion and totally...
What's the easiest way to decline updates? WAM! Licensed WSUS Automated Maintenance (WAM) users get to enjoy numerous benefits after installing our groundbreaking software. Whether it be creating more free time to do other tasks outside of maintaining their WSUS, or...
We’re constantly evolving our software to ensure it stays up to date and is providing the best experience for our users. We are happy to announce that the newest version of WAM is now available to all active licensed users! What can you expect in the latest version?...
Windows 10 Spring and Fall Updates Microsoft has had a track record since 2017 of releasing 2 versions of Windows 10 every year - one in the spring, one in the fall. These have been feature-rich versions that have an 18 month servicing plan for security and...
Adam Marshall is a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer who specializes in security. As an IT Specialist, Adam takes care of everything IT related including hardware, software, networking, firewalls, backups, desktops, servers, Active Directory, Exchange, Dynamics GP...
There is no cost to use WSUS from Microsoft, they provide it free, included with Windows Server, but there are costs associated with it—mainly the salary or wage of the person that needs to run and maintain the system. Also, if you choose to contact Microsoft Support...
As an IT professional, your employer pays for your knowledge and expertise so it’s important to spend your time wisely. While keeping up with WSUS maintenance is crucial, it can eat up a lot of your time. For many companies, a subscription to WAM is actually the most...
WSUS (Windows Server Update Services) and Microsoft Configuration Manager (ConfigMgr/SCCM) are both Microsoft products. While they’re often discussed together, especially in relation to updates, they are two distinct products. In the most general terms, WSUS is...
How often do you perform WSUS maintenance? Is it a monthly task? Quarterly? Or maybe even yearly? You need to have a plan for WSUS maintenance. Microsoft recommends monthly maintenance. But ideally, you should be proactively maintaining your servers and database for...
If you’re running into performance issues with your WSUS server, your first step should be to investigate the WSUS database to see if it’s the cause of the errors. If you’re lax with maintenance, the database could be filled with unneeded and unnecessary updates,...
Removing unnecessary updates will free up a significant amount of space on servers. While WSUS knows when older updates become obsolete and are no longer needed, they remain on the server—taking up space—until *you* remove them. You can manually remove unnecessary...
A basic WSUS deployment is composed of a single server within a corporate firewall which connects directly to Microsoft Update. In this simple configuration, updates are downloaded directly to the server. If your configuration includes multiple servers, you’ll have a...
Many IT administrators are lax with WSUS maintenance. While Microsoft recommends monthly maintenance, and outlines the steps required in 17 pages of detailed instructions, the truth is, many IT specialists just don’t have the time. Instead of proactively maintaining...
If you do not need—or do not want to deploy—certain updates to your network ever, you need to manually select and decline updates. Declining updates for the sake of managing what you see in the update views is NOT the way to manage WSUS. You should scope your views...
There’s nothing worse than finding the perfect software, only to discover it’s not regularly updated or that you can’t access meaningful support. At AJ Tek, we believe it’s important to constantly evolve our software and be available to our customers should there be...
How much time do you spend on WSUS maintenance? Do you put it off because of the time it requires, or do you just dread the monotonous tasks of going through updates? Do you even know that you need to do WSUS maintenance? Did you know that there is an easy way to...
As a system admin, it’s likely that you’ll run into WSUS errors and Windows Update client errors, as it’s just part of the job. The extremely frustrating part is that often, the error code is a maddening mix of letters and numbers: 0x8024401F 0x8024401c 0x8024402b...
If you’re running out of space in your WSUS database, you might decline updates and run the Cleanup Wizard; however, this Cleanup tool doesn’t actually clean the database, leading to sluggish and slow operations. To easily clean up your WSUS database, there’s only...
In order to keep WAM affordable for businesses and to continue providing prompt support and new development, we streamline our ordering process. That includes having all our transactions done online so that customers can purchase a WAM license and immediately begin...
According to Microsoft Support, you should be performing WSUS maintenance monthly.1 Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon for System Administrators to set up WSUS servers and then forget or completely ignore maintenance tasks, which can cause a number of problems down the...
With the prevalence of cyberattacks, it’s imperative that every company has a cybersecurity plan. Attacks are so frequent, it can be hard to keep up with the latest breaches. Troy Hunt, a Microsoft MVP & Microsoft Regional Director, created a website, Have I Been...
If your WSUS server is consuming too much space — it can be a symptom of slowdowns, errors and countless other problems. System administrators can waste a lot of time trying to clear space and often their efforts would be better spent elsewhere. WAM is automated WSUS...
At AJ Tek, our vision is to make IT simple and automated for professionals. Our flagship product, WSUS Automated Maintenance (WAM) embodies this philosophy by performing all the tasks that a system administrator would need to do, leaving only approving updates and...
Banks have strict protocols when it comes to security and it can be hard for system administrators to ensure that WSUS servers are properly maintained with critical security upgrades. With WAM, you can purchase licenses that match your WSUS configuration so that you...
When working with sensitive and confidential information, it’s imperative WSUS is regularly maintained to prevent security risks from compromising your computing environment. Keeping WSUS maintained can be a full-time job and falling behind can put your law office at...
WAM is the best solution for system administrators working in school systems where thousands of computers need to be maintained. Keeping up with not only patching systems, but also including the maintenance that needs to happen on the patch management system itself...
Adam Marshall, President of AJ Tek, has the proud distinction of being a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP). This prestigious title was awarded to him for his work and contribution in the “Windows and Devices for IT” MVP category. Microsoft MVPs MVP titles are...
We’re proud to announce that our very own Adam Marshall had the privilege of being interviewed by host Richard Campbell for the latest episode (639) of RunAs Radio. RunAs Radio is an established weekly podcast for IT professionals working with Microsoft products. Now...
WSUS Automated Maintenance (WAM) is a unique product on the market. There’s nothing else that currently offers the same functionality, ease of use and low price-point. The best part of WAM is that as a system administrator, you’re able to work on other tasks, instead...
I have come across an anomaly in the Windows 10 software through our work here at AJ Tek and helping out in the community. It only occurs in particular circumstances, but it does appear somewhat regularly and frustrates the user. Rather than the slow and winding road...
Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) is mandatory for many companies but can be frustrating and complicated to manage. WAM is a fully automated software solution that can index the WSUS database, remove declined updates and drivers, clean synchronization logs and...
The basic WAM license is called a Single or Upstream license. This is the only license you need for a single WSUS server. In this scenario, the WSUS server connects directly to Microsoft Update to download updates. Types of Systems & Licenses In addition to the...
On most new systems, WAM can clean WSUS in under 72 hours; however, older systems with slower processing power could take longer. Older hardware—especially systems between 2010 and 2012—can slow down when it comes to removing obsolete updates. While many systems will...
New system administrators will have a varying degree of familiarity with WSUS. Some might have helped with Windows server admin tasks in previous roles while others might be learning everything on the job. When it comes to WSUS best practices, there is nothing more...
When using your WSUS server, there are hundreds of possible errors you could encounter. Investigating WSUS errors and possible solutions can take up an enormous amount of your time, whether it’s through trial-and-error or searching forum articles on fixes for your...
As a system administrator, are you tired of seeing “an error occurred trying to connect the WSUS server” or “the WSUS administration console has encountered an unexpected error” while working with WSUS? With our WSUS Automated Maintenance (WAM) software, you can free...
Why should I learn PowerShell? Microsoft, Linux, Unix, Solaris, Android, iOS - Operating Systems that run our planet. Computers, Phones, Cameras, MediaPlayers, BlueRay players, Set top boxes, Alarm Systems, IoT - Some of the devices that we have that use these...
