Support Tools Installer Hangs

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guy Scharf
  • Start date Start date
G

Guy Scharf

The installer for Windows XP support tools is hanging.

On a new system, I installed from a CD with XP Pro + SP1a. I then
installed SP2 followed by many different applications.

I then realized I had forgotten to install the support tools on the CD.
When I run Setup for the support tools, Setup asks a few questions then
shows the usual installation progress dialog. Progress goes almost
immediately to about 80% complete and there everything stops.

If I press the Cancel button, I get the usual dialog about canceling.
But the installation dialog never disappears. If I press the Cancel
button again, there is no response this time.

If I select the installation task from Task Manager and ask it to end,
the installer window instantly disappears. However, after I do that, I
cannot start System Restore. So I reboot after this happens.

Wondering if the problem might be related to system restore points, I
see that the System Volume Information folder is quite large. The C:
drive is 32 GB and the restore folder appears to be about 4 GB, but I'm
not at all certain that both numbers are in the same units. System
restore space for C: is set for the default 12% of drive size. All
restore points, back to RP0, appear still to be present. The most
recent restore points are 34MB each and seem to correspond to my
attempts to install the support tools.

Quite a few of the recent restore points relate to failed
installations, either of the Windows XP support tools or of the USPS
Shipping Assistant (which uses InstallShield and which is also failing,
but in a different way -- the Shipping Assistant installation fails
with two processes running -- the installer and a Shipping Assistant
process).

The most recent restore point, labelled "Software Distribution Services
2.0" corresponds in time to when I used Add/Remove programs to add IIS
and Fax support. I did two other critical things immediately after
that: I turned off System Restore on all but the C: drive and I ran sfc
/scannow with the original CD, not one combined with SP2. Could that
have damaged something?

I have installed other products since I first encountered these
failures but they were small programs and I suspect did not attempt to
create restore points.

While it won't be much fun, I could restore the system to a time last
night, before I ran the sfc.

I may be completely off track here by looking at System Restore issues.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I've hit some kind of wall
here.

Guy
 
Guy said:
The installer for Windows XP support tools is hanging.

On a new system, I installed from a CD with XP Pro + SP1a. I then
installed SP2 followed by many different applications.

I then realized I had forgotten to install the support tools on the CD.
When I run Setup for the support tools, Setup asks a few questions then
shows the usual installation progress dialog. Progress goes almost
immediately to about 80% complete and there everything stops.
Hi

Did you use the SP2 version of Support Tools?

Windows XP Service Pack 2 Support Tools
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=49ae8576-9bb9-4126-9761-ba8011fabf38
 
Torgeir Bakken \(MVP\) said:
Hi

Did you use the SP2 version of Support Tools?

No, thanks for pointing that out to me.

However, the SP2 support tools installer fails in the same way.

I am now guessing that I damaged the system, perhaps with sfc. I'm
going first to try reapplying SP2. If that doesn't work, I'll restore
the system to before the last known good restore point and reinstall
programs from there forward.

Guy
 
Guy Scharf said:
I am now guessing that I damaged the system, perhaps with sfc.
I'm going first to try reapplying SP2. If that doesn't work, I'll
restore the system to before the last known good restore point and
reinstall programs from there forward.

Neither worked. <sigh> So I reformatted and started over and all is
working well now.

Guy
 

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