Server 2012 R2 Unable to install windows updates or add server roles

[tnoon758]

Server 2012 R2, receiving the following message when attempting to install windows updates or add server roles.

An illegal character was encountered. For a multi-byte character set this includes a lead byte without a succeeding trail byte. For the Unicode character set this includes the characters 0xFFFF and 0xFFFE.


The DISM log file can be found at C:\Windows\Logs\DISM\dism.log

I tried to attach the DISM.log file but it is over the allowed size.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

[BrianDrab]

Hi and welcome to Sysnative. Please start with the following. I understand that it may fail but it will provide me the necessary information in the log.

Step#1 - DISM /RestoreHealth Scan
Warning:this fix is specific to the user in this thread. No one else should follow these instructions as it may cause more harm than good. If you are after assistance, please start a thread of your own.

1. Right-click on the Start
   
   button and select Command Prompt (Admin)
2. When command prompt opens, Copy (Ctrl+C) and Paste (Right-click > Paste) the following command into it, then press Enter
   Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth
3. Once it finishes, copy and paste the following into the command-prompt window and press Enter. If prompted to overwrite the existing file go ahead.
   copy %windir%\logs\cbs\cbs.log "%userprofile%\Desktop\cbs.txt"
   
4. Once this has completed please go to your Desktop and you will find CBS.txt => Please zip/upload to this thread.
   Please Note:: if the file is too big (over 7MB) to upload to your next post, please upload via a service such as Dropbox or One Drive or SendSpace and just provide the link.