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How to enable verbose client side WSUS trace logging

How To


Summary

The registry changes allows for a means for additional verbose WSUS client logging sometimes needed for troubleshooting.

Objective

Adding verbose logging into the WindowsUpdate.log

Environment

Windows operating systems

WSUS Client

Steps

Open the registry editor and navigate to the following location.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\Trace

Create the following values

Value name: Flags
Value type: REG_DWORD
Value data: 00000007

Value name: Level
Value type: REG_DWORD
Value data: 00000004

Once the above entries have been created, close the registry

Restart the Windows update service for the verbose logging to take affect

Reproduce the issue

Open an elevated PowerShell

Type Get-WindowsUpdateLog which converts the default ETL files into a readable format in the  WindowsUpdate.log  (Default location will be in the users profile C:\Users\User1\Desktop\WindowsUpdate.log)

Document Location

Worldwide

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Document Information

Modified date:
13 October 2025

UID

ibm17245049