When you want to apply Windows Update by working around a GPO in place, or remotely on a computer without having to RDP on it, knowing some command line commands might be useful.
However it’s hard to find the perfect way to do it, actually, I am still looking for it. I found the following possibilities, but none of them is perfect.
Applying updates remotely, from a PSSession
This command will trigger the installation of pending updates, remotely, yet you won’t be able to see what’s going on as there is no output
USOCLIENT.EXE RefreshSettings StartScan StartDownload StartInstall The good thing about this one is it able to apply feature upgrades (From one Windows version to another one). You will need to ask the user to reboot and apply though (He should see the orange button while restarting his computer)
Another way, to apply updates, is to use the following Powershell module
With this method, it seems hard to apply them from a PSSession without getting access denied, I think I need to dig deeper to understand why. However, you can run it from the workstation if the policy in place denies you to do it from the GUI (as an administrator obviously):
# install the module, once for all
install-module pswindowsupdate
# trigger Windows update check
get-windowsupdate
# Finally, and this command does not work remotely, install them
install-windowsupdate