How to determine the date and time of most recent successful Windows Update run on Windows Server 2016?

Question

It appears that Microsoft removed this registry key in Server 2016.

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\Auto Update\Results\Install

Does anyone know of an equivalent registry key that has the last Windows Update install success date/time? Or perhaps a different method of querying this value?

I've spent hours googling, but have found nothing. Closest registry key I can find is:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU

However, it has no key for last successful install date/time.

Answer 1

Tested and this guy's find did work:

Get-WmiObject -Class win32_reliabilityRecords -filter "sourcename = 'Microsoft-
Windows-WindowsUpdateClient'" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue |
select @{LABEL = "date";EXPRESSION = {$_.ConvertToDateTime($_.timegenerated)}}, 
@{LABEL = 'Update';EXPRESSION = {$_.message}} |
FT -AutoSize -Wrap

Gives you a nice summary:

date                 Update
----                 ------
8/18/2017 8:39:51 AM Installation Successful: Windows successfully installed 
the following update: 2017-08 Cumulative Update for Windows Server 2016 for 
x64-based Systems (KB4034658)
...

Of course you could just take out the description & titles if you just want the date itself.

https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/28713293/How-to-get-last-success-date-time-of-Windows-Update-on-Windows-10.html

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/heyscriptingguy/2011/08/22/use-powershell-to-easily-find-information-about-hotfixes/

Answer 2

I use:

    Invoke-Command -ComputerName  $ComputerName -ScriptBlock { (New-Object -com "Microsoft.Update.AutoUpdate").Results.LastInstallationSuccessDate} -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

Be aware that the time is in UTC.

Answer 3

You could use the Setup Event log. Something like this?

Get-WinEvent -LogName Setup | where{$_.message -match "success"} | select -First 1

I normally check recently installed events like this:

Get-WinEvent -LogName Setup -MaxEvents 5 | Format-Table Machinename,Timecreated,Message -A -Wr

I did test and it does work on 2016 as well.

Answer 4

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\LastDownloadsPurgeTime in windows 2016 and 2019

this will allow you to have the date of the last installation, it is the only thing that has these new versions