SOLVED: How To Force a Clean Up of WSUS Data & Resolve SERVER NODE RESET Using PowerShell

Updated: January 2022

If you cannot complete a clean up of your WSUS server through the WSUS console because it keeps erroring out with SERVER NODE RESET, you can hopefully complete through the following PowerShell command line:

Invoke-WsusServerCleanup -DeclineSupersededUpdates -DeclineExpiredUpdates -CleanupObsoleteComputers -CleanupObsoleteUpdates -CleanupUnneededContentFiles -CompressUpdates

If this fails or times out, you can run each of the commands one by one:

Invoke-WsusServerCleanup -CleanupUnneededContentFiles -CompressUpdates
Invoke-WsusServerCleanup -DeclineSupersededUpdates
Invoke-WsusServerCleanup -DeclineExpiredUpdates
Invoke-WsusServerCleanup -CleanupObsoleteComputers
Invoke-WsusServerCleanup -CleanupObsoleteUpdates -CompressUpdates

Whichever command you finish on should include -CompressUpdates because that is the command which actually deletes the garbage from the database.

If you want to know what the switches are for INVOKE-WSUSSERVERCLEANUP, skim through THIS Microsoft article.

Note that if your WSUS database is corrupted or has other issues, you will want to run WSUS Database cleanup as we describe HERE.

There are a few notes to this script:

1. You need to run POWERSHELL as an Admin
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2. If you see the following error go to your SERVICES and start WSUS Certificate Server or just type NET START WSusCertServer
   Invoke-WsusServerCleanup : The service cannot be started, either because it is disabled or because it has no enabled devices associated with it
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3. As you can see in the screen shot my first round at this failed.  I also had .NET error the appeared which I mistakenly cleared before reading carefully.  Then I shortened up the script to do less:

Invoke-WsusServerCleanup  -CleanupUnneededContentFiles -CompressUpdates

Then I ran the other half of the script:

Invoke-WsusServerCleanup -DeclineSupersededUpdates -DeclineExpiredUpdates -CleanupObsoleteComputers -CleanupObsoleteUpdates

Then I ran the entire script again, which apparently did nothing.  After that I was able to the WSUS SERVER CLEAN UP WIZARD from the WSUS console without problem.

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I found some information on this command HERE and HERE.