How Do We Confirm WSUS 2.0 is Supplying Updates

wasn't a dashboard that says what... 3.0 solves this problem.

you can install 3.0 and do away with the problem all together which would me my advice. Might take a couple of days to sync and get updates pushed out if stations need them, but 3.0 will give you reports you can understand and reflect the status of each covered workstation and server.

Just to add to what CG IT has said, 3.0 SP1 is available and is very easy to manage. That being said, the answer your question about for more information is here:

http://technet2.microsoft.com/windowsserver/en/library/d446d310-413f-4844-8aad-c557712397401033.mspx?mfr=true

If you want to force an update detection on a client PC, open a command prompt and type: "wuauclt.exe /detectnow" without the quotes. Then look at WindowsUpdate.txt in the Windows directory for any errors.

Also, what is leading folks to think they are not getting these updates? Is it for a specific application, Windows XP, Office 2003, Live Toolbar, etc., because you can specify which products to update with WSUS. As a final check, if the outside consultant didn't disable it, go to the Microsoft Update website, not Windows Update, and have it check for updates. If it finds critical updates that need to be installed it means one of two things, WSUS isn't working correctly or WSUS is not updating those applications.

If you want to upgrade to WSUS 3.0 SP1 the link is here. You can use the above link to look at the install information. If you do upgrade, here are some considerations. It will require you to uninstall WSUS 2.0, which it will do automatically during the install process. If the outside consultant used group policy to assign PCs into groups, you will need to re-create those groups in WSUS 3. The install isn't very difficult overall. Here is the link:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=F87B4C5E-4161-48AF-9FF8-A96993C688DF&displaylang=en

I definitly agree with what other posters have said about upgrading to WSUS 3.0. I performed a WSUS upgrade about a year ago at my old job and while there was some initial work to get it all running smoothly, the work quickly paid off. I much preferred 3.0 to it's predecessor.

Another piece of advice I have is to download and start using the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer (MBSA) tool.

This tool is free from Microsoft and can be used to scan systems for a range of security issues. It will tell you of any missing security updates, as well as other vulnerabilities including IIS and SQL security holes and items such as weak passwords for local accounts.

You may not want to scan your entire network every week with MBSA as the logs can take some time to go through, but you should definitly scan critical servers and a random sampling of workstations on a regular basis.