How to Join Windows 7 Client to SBS 2008 Domain (Connect Computer Error/Installing SBS Update Rollup 3)

Adding a Windows 7 client to Small Business Server 2008 network is a trivial task and probably the easiest way to do this is to use https://connect in Internet Explorer. You might get the infamous error “This computer does not meet the maximum operating system requirements for running client setup”, if the SBS server is not updated with “SBS 2008 Update Rollup 3 – SBS2008-KB969121-x64-ENU.msp”.

Normally, the package is not installed automatically, and if you check Microsoft Knowledge Base article KB969121, you will see that SBS 2008 Update Rollup 3 is available only through Microsoft update.

In this Screencast, we will demonstrate two ways to solve this issue.
First, we will show you an useful way to find, download and install separate update packages which are normally available only through Microsoft Update. As you can expect, the demonstration will be done with the rollup 3 package – SBS2008-KB969121-x64-ENU.msp.
In addition, we will demonstrate the standard approach – deploying the package through Windows Software Update Services on SBS 2008.

We recommend you to check also our SBS Screencasts:
– How to Connect Computers to Your Network – SBS 2008
– Most Common Problems when Connecting Computers to SBS 2008 Network

Step 1 In the first step, we briefly review what you should check before connecting a client to SBS 2008 network, and then, we demonstrate the Verify computer requirements error, which you get when joining a Windows 7 client.

Step 2 Next, we show you how to search and download directly separate updates from Microsoft update site. You can see how to find, download and install SBS2008-KB969121-x64-ENU.msp, and how to join successfully Windows 7 clients to the SBS 2008 domain.

Step 3 In this step, we demonstrate how to install SBS 2008 Update Rollup 3 package through WSUS on the Small Business Server.