SCCM Configmgr 2012 R2 SP1 download content from Microsoft updates causing client stuck at downloading policies

Since few days ,have been working on case with Microsoft on client issue wherein ,some clients stuck at downloading the policies/jobs and remain in Queued state without any reason and they never get deployments.

When you deploy the software update group to collection ,you will have to put a special attention to configuration setting in download settings : “If software updates are not available on preferred distribution point or remote distribution point,download content from Microsoft updates”

This is a new feature in Configuration manager 2012 SP1 that allows clients to fall back and use Windows Update to download the content. The client will only download content for the updates you have approved and deployed to client.

This is good option to select when the content is not available on Distribution point or client has some issues (possibly network)downloading the content from distribution point and client will direct to Microsoft update,download the content and install it.

But ,what happens when client do not have access to the internet (Microsoft update) and content is not available on the DP ? Here the problem comes.

If you check the option “if updates not available on DP, download from Microsoft Updates”, when the local/remote DP’s content location is not available, clients fallback to download from Microsoft Update, however, if it also fails at downloading from MU with some Internet connection issue, the DTS job (DataTransferService) keeps retrying the download the content and increments the Active job count on each failure until reaching the Active Job limit of 50 and  it never gets decremented.

DataTransferService.log shows

Downloading from http://wsus.ds.download.windowsupdate.com:80/c/msdownload/update/software/secu/2016/07 without proxy encountered error: BITS error: 'The operation timed out

Context: 'The error occurred while the remote file was being processed.

QUEUE: Active job count incremented, value = 50

DTSJob {97A264D2-B234-4ED7-B1D9-257F80920063} in state 'Queued'.

If the client exhausts the Active Job limit, the clients get stuck and never receive any policy unless you reset the active job limit .

Though we have successfully distributed the content to DP’s (can see from the console and reports) and hundreds of clients in the same subnet/region are successfully downloaded /installed but not all clients.

So the only possible fix is: Restart SMS agent host on the problematic clients. This process will reset the active job limit and start downloading the policies and content without any further changes on the site server ,but make sure to deselect the setting if your clients do not have access to internet.

I am not sure with the selected settings above (download content from Microsoft update ),if this issue appear in Configuration manager current branch or is it only appear in Configmgr 2012  .

This issue is filed as bug in Microsoft connect and is active Status . https://connect.microsoft.com/ConfigurationManagervnext/feedback/details/956321/css-configmgr-2012-r2-dts-does-not-decrement-active-bits-job-counter-when-it-fails-to-download-content-from-the-mu-location

There is no updated information yet on this issue from product team but can we see this issue fix in next cumulative update for Configmgr 2012 ?