how do I force updates on wsus?

yeh thought maybe there was a way

You can open a command line window on the client you want to force and type,

wuauclt /detectnow

in order to force a detection cycle to start, but the only way to do that remotely would be using remote desktop or some other similar tool.

You can, but it is a little complex. You basically create a new computer group, and set a deadline for any updates for that group that is before the current date. It's a little more complex then I want to try to explain in a post, put you can PM me if you want.

wuauclt /detectnow from a run command worked perfectly. I had been trying gpupdate with no success. My updates have now come down and are now installing.

Thanks!

Does the computer has to be already on a group and updates already aproved for that to work? sorry I am new with WSUS so I have lots of questions.

Do you know the location where the updates are saved and can I copy the updates manually to a client and runn it from there?

wuauclt /detectnow is just a command that makes the computer you run it on check it's own Windows update settings and download and/or install updates in accordance with it's settings. In order for it to work with WSUS you need to have a GPO that specifices the WSUS target server and the computer must be set up in an update group on the WSUS server.

As an additional tip, if you want to run the command on a remote computer without using rdp to log in to it I recommend the nifty sysinternal tool called psExec which basically lets you open a command prompt for a remote computer where you can run all sorts of nifty commands including wuauclt, gpupdate and even shutdown.exe

Thanks a lot!