Third-party updates with SCCM have been around for a while. Whether using built-in catalogues, third-party catalogues, or additional products like PatchMyPC, it can be extremely useful to keep devices up to date for applications and drivers. With that said, those updates can require cleanup because of the integration with WSUS. Also, misconfiguration is possible, especially with the built-in catalogues, where it is possible to stage content in the WSUS Content folder, even before a need for a driver update. This can cause the storage to quickly fill up with 100s of GB of useless data.

Stage Content is not required at all, and NOT recommended. Just like regular Windows Updates, it is possible to download on-demand, the updates wished to be published to your environment.

Turning on the Stage the content for selected categories automatically, along with selecting all products from a vendor, will generate an extremely large download automatically!!

In this blog post, we will detail SCCM Clean WSusContent folder after the Stage Content for third-party software update catalogs has been mistakenly checked.

Note that we’ll use the PatchMyPC publishing services to assist with the required operations to WSUS.

SCCM Clean WSusContent – Adjust the subscription to the catalog

Before cleaning up, either Unsubscribe from the catalog OR modify the Stage Content option to prevent automatic download.

• Under Software Library / Third-Party Software Update catalogs, right-click on the catalog and select Unsubscribe.

• To modify the option, it properties on the catalog, and change the Stage Content option back to Do not stage content.

Doing one or the other option won’t affect past downloads, so at this point,t the disk is still full and will remain like that if we don’t take other actions.

Declining updates by using PatchMyPC Publishing service

To use the WSUS cleanup wizard, updates must be declined before the cached content can be cleaned up. while there are other solutions, we use the PatchMyPC publishing service because it is so simple to achieve this task.

• Open PatchMyPC Publishing service, go to the Update tab, and select Options

• Select Run Wizard under the Modify Published updates

• Select the Vendor to filter the updates associated with the third-party catalog. in this case, we’ll use Dell.

• The list provided comes from the WSUS database, not PAtchMyPC or Configuration Manager.
  • note that most, if not all, are set to Declined = No

• Select All and hit Decline.

• This process will last a few minutes top.

• Updates are now showing as Declined=Yes

• Once this is completed, it must be synced.
  • Under Software Library / all Software Update, hit Synchronize Software Update.
  • This will take a long time. Expect a few hours easily.

• Once completed, updates in the Configuration manager console will display as Expired.

Run the WSUS server cleanup wizard

Once updates are declined and synced, the WSUS Cleanup wizard can do its magic.

• Open the Wsus console and browse to Options, select Server Cleanup Wizard.

• All can be checked, but the most important is the Expired Updates.

• Once completed, it will detail the cleanup per categories. In this case, 126GB of stage content driver updates were deleted from the server.

Hope this helped!