Recently, we had an issue where KB4038777 was failing to install on some Windows 2008 R2 servers, but was fine on others.
Sometimes, this indicates that the “maximum run time” on a patch has been set ludicrously low (generally 10 minutes) on a specific patch – and the servers that it is failing on, are those that don’t perform so well – and therefore time out.
In this case, the patch was failing with the following line in the CBS.log
Failed to find file: x86_microsoft-windows-directwrite_31bf3856ad364e35_7.1.7601.23688_none_c657164201eacd8d\DWrite.dll [HRESULT = 0x80070002 – ERROR_FILE_NOT_FOUND]
We tried a number of things to “fix” this, including comparing file versions of Dwrite.dll, cleaning out the softwaredistribution cache, disabling AV etc – to no avail.
After a few hours, we found that installing the “desktop experience” feature (which requires a reboot), then running a disk cleanup (including windows updates) on the server then allowed us to install this update.
Its not an ideal “solution” – and quite frankly – all Windows 2008 R2 server should be in the process of being decommissioned… but aside from that, it seems that admins have the option of
a) installing desktop experience, rebooting, then running a disk cleanup
b) waiting for next months rollup – which may not have the same issue.
We fought with this one for hours, thank you for your post – enabling desktop experience and running a disk cleanup fixed our problem. A google search for the log file entry brought me here, so thank you for including that in your post.
– Liam