fuct wsus database

all is back to normal.

i avoided the restore option initially for two reasons:
1) i did a lot of cleanup before the corruption, so i was hoping to save the clean version.
2) i forgot about the backup.

I finally decided to go with the backup for two reasons:
1) i remembered the backup
2) I also remembered that the cleanup was done the day before, and was thus included in the backup.

All is back to norml.