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Q. I'm experiencing problems with BITS transfers on my system, is there any tool to see the state of BITS from the command line?

A. Microsoft provides the BITSADMIN command line utility that lists all BITS transfers for all users using the /list /allusers switches, as shown below.

C:\>bitsadmin /list /allusers

BITSADMIN version 3.0 \\[ 7.5.7601 \\]
BITS administration utility.
(C) Copyright 2000-2006 Microsoft Corp.

BITSAdmin is deprecated and is not guaranteed to be available in future versions
of Windows.
Administrative tools for the BITS service are now provided by BITS PowerShell cm
dlets.

\\{D7BAF9CE-5ED2-4AF3-8B58-BEF9332BACBD\\} 'WU Client Download' SUSPENDED 0 / 1 0 /
26987
\\{DDD96793-B763-4980-9969-A2BEA2B85603\\} 'WU Client Download' SUSPENDED 0 / 1 0 /
1008579
\\{56EE8411-B354-4A46-AB65-9F84EAEF9451\\} 'WU Client Download' SUSPENDED 0 / 1 0 /
4538
Listed 3 job(s).

You can get more detail about each job by passing the GUID. For example,

C:\>bitsadmin /listfiles \\{D7BAF9CE-5ED2-4AF3-8B58-BEF9332BACBD\\}

BITSADMIN version 3.0 \\[ 7.5.7601 \\]
BITS administration utility.
(C) Copyright 2000-2006 Microsoft Corp.

BITSAdmin is deprecated and is not guaranteed to be available in future versions
of Windows.
Administrative tools for the BITS service are now provided by BITS PowerShell cm
dlets.

0 / 26987 WORKING http://au.download.windowsupdate.com/msdownload/update/softwar
e/secu/2010/05/windows6.1-kb980218-x64_5c07ad93437ff5eeac46a6357fa11833fd98613a.
psf -> C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download\516e2cc9fe7a890636ed61fe5d349711
\5c07ad93437ff5eeac46a6357fa11833fd98613a-1
Ranges:
offset 33454, length 426
offset 36025, length 355
offset 38596, length 377
offset 39730, length 509
offset 40810, length 578
offset 41992, length 605
offset 43205, length 623
offset 175871, length 10536
offset 364597, length 12978
Listed 1 file(s).

Using this tool gives a good insight into the BITS traffic and where problems may be occurring.

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