Service Pack 4 installation takes 24 hours !?

[Mike Gale]

I'm trying to install SP4 on a brand new system (P4 2.8 / 1G). It was
ok until about the 20% mark (checking free space.. etc) and then
seemed to freeze there but I let it run overnight. Now, after 6 hours,
it's only about 30% done (it's installing files, each one's taking a
good 30 seconds minimum). At this pace, I figure it will be installed
by new years. Also, the cursor is not very responsive (jerky). What
might the problem be (hardware?) and what should I do? The system
looked like it was running OK until I started the installation. TIA.

 

[Bill Crocker]

Try cleaning up your hard drive, deleting any temp files, and temporary
internet files, cookies, etc. Make sure you don't have any apps running in
the background. Defragment your hard drive. Make sure you have enough free
space.

Bill Crocker

 

[Mike Gale]

Try cleaning up your hard drive, deleting any temp files, and temporary
internet files, cookies, etc. Make sure you don't have any apps running in
the background. Defragment your hard drive. Make sure you have enough free
space.

This is a clean install, brand new system, HD. Win2K was installed on
a brand new NTFS formatted partition minutes before I tried SP4.

 

[Vance Green]

Are you installing SP4 from the Internet via
Windows Update? If you are, you are NOT protected
from the Blaster virus until AFTER installation, and you
may have gotten infected while connected to get the update.

(nice Catch-22, eh?)

This was common when the Blaster virus first made the rounds...

Solution seemed to be to apply just the Blaster patch first
by downloading it to an immune computer, and running
it on the target machine. Then you could at least d/l SP4
and get it installed.

Or do the disable SVCHOST, etc. route, there's instructions
somewhere on how to do this.

 

[Dan Seur]

Mike - if your "1GB" is not a typo then that's almost certainly your
problem. To run swiftly and not wind up thrashing, and accommodate
growth for any length of time, and accommodate the space required for
app installs and significant OS updates like huge service packs, the OS
partition should be at least 4-5GBs. Also best to put the pagefile
elsewhere, on a different hard drive. If W2k is trying to execute on a
1GB partition, it's spending all its time swapping everything in and
out. And it will eventually throw up and roll over when its partition is
too full and fragmented - and you won't be able to defrag it.

 

[Enkidu]

That's probably his RAM,

Cheers,

Cliff

Mike - if your "1GB" is not a typo then that's almost certainly your
problem. To run swiftly and not wind up thrashing, and accommodate
growth for any length of time, and accommodate the space required for
app installs and significant OS updates like huge service packs, the OS
partition should be at least 4-5GBs. Also best to put the pagefile
elsewhere, on a different hard drive. If W2k is trying to execute on a
1GB partition, it's spending all its time swapping everything in and
out. And it will eventually throw up and roll over when its partition is
too full and fragmented - and you won't be able to defrag it.

Christmas comes but once a year, thank the gods. I don't think
that I could cope with twice.

 

[Brian]

I think he was referring to 1GB of ram.

Vance Green has a point. If you really want to know if
you have the blaster virus, check the CPU utilization on a
router (if available) between the system and the server.
I had one hitting 16% utilization when normally it was at
1%. Apply the patch, then SP4 should install.