We all know SCCM can be your best friend, and your worst nightmare. Today I had to compile a list of client logs to check for a friend of mine, and thought I’d share. These should get you 95% of the way on your troubleshooting (from the client side anyways). Remember to always use CMTrace as your SCCM log viewer, it just makes your life easier.

All of these listed directly below, should be located in C:\Windows\CCM\logs on your client.

• UpdatesDeployment.log 
  • Provides information about the deployment on the client, including software update activation, evaluation, and enforcement. Verbose logging shows additional information about the interaction with the client user interface.
• UpdatesHandler.log
  • Provides information about software update compliance scanning and about the download and installation of software updates on the client.
• ScanAgent.log
  • Provides information about the scan requests for software updates, what tool is requested for the scan, the WSUS location, and so on.
• WUAHandler.log
  • Provides information about when the Windows Update Agent on the client searches for software updates.
• UpdatesStore.log
  • Provides information about the compliance status for the software updates that were assessed during the compliance scan cycle.

You can also reference C:\Windows\WindowsUpdate.log which is a windows native log and not to SCCM, but is updated with actions taken by SCCM in regards to updates.

I hope this has made your day, at least a little bit easier!

Thanks!