XP Service Pack 2 hangs on installation

G

Guest

If anyone could help me out with this problem, I would deeply appreciate it.
I recently tried to install Windows XP Service Pack 2. I closed all programs,
as instructed. The installation seemed to go fine, except that at the final
stages, where it says "Finishing Installation: Performing Cleanup", it just
froze at that progress point. I was able to move the mouse and perform other
tasks, but the installation of the Service Pack never completed. I waited a
couple of hours and then restarted my machine. I used the restore point and
everything is OK now. The thing is, this is not the first time this has
happened. It also happened a while back on the same machine before a hard
drive reformatting took place. I'm unsure of what to do next. I will try
again, but if anyone could give me a tip or two on the SP2 installation, it
would be really helpful.
 
F

FeMaster

Matthew M. said:
If anyone could help me out with this problem, I would deeply appreciate
it.
I recently tried to install Windows XP Service Pack 2. I closed all
programs,
as instructed. The installation seemed to go fine, except that at the
final
stages, where it says "Finishing Installation: Performing Cleanup", it
just
froze at that progress point. I was able to move the mouse and perform
other
tasks, but the installation of the Service Pack never completed. I waited
a
couple of hours and then restarted my machine. I used the restore point
and
everything is OK now. The thing is, this is not the first time this has
happened. It also happened a while back on the same machine before a hard
drive reformatting took place. I'm unsure of what to do next. I will try
again, but if anyone could give me a tip or two on the SP2 installation,
it
would be really helpful.

Don't worry about it. LOTS of people have this same issue. Reinstall, and
let it be. Once it reaches that point and goes no further, let it sit for a
bit just to be sure that it really IS hung, then just cancel out the install
(Click red X in corner, or whatever it takes). At this point, SP2 has
already been installed. For some reason, on some machines, it hangs during
the cleanup phase.

I had the same problem with 2 of my 3 machines. There are no side-effects
to doing this. I searched everywhere, and found no excess "junk" on my
systems (compared the successful one to the other two computers) that needed
to be cleaned up, so I can only assume that the cleanup was successful, but
the program hung for whatever reason.
 
P

Poprivet

Matthew said:
If anyone could help me out with this problem, I would deeply
appreciate it. I recently tried to install Windows XP Service Pack 2.
I closed all programs, as instructed. The installation seemed to go
fine, except that at the final stages, where it says "Finishing
Installation: Performing Cleanup", it just froze at that progress
point. I was able to move the mouse and perform other tasks, but the
installation of the Service Pack never completed. I waited a couple
of hours and then restarted my machine. I used the restore point and
everything is OK now. The thing is, this is not the first time this
has happened. It also happened a while back on the same machine
before a hard drive reformatting took place. I'm unsure of what to do
next. I will try again, but if anyone could give me a tip or two on
the SP2 installation, it would be really helpful.

It can be tricky sometimes, unfortunately. Usually it turns out to have
been something simple that was overlooked though.

You might have a look at these links if you haven't already:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/sp2/default.mspx
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?pr=windowsxpsp2
http://www3.telus.net/dandemar/spackins.htm

The links came from:

http://www.bootdisk.com/xptop20.htm The same info is available from
several other sites too.

The poster who said everything was fine after exitting out of a hung install
may have lucked out, but that hasn't been my experience. In the only three
cases where I've come across that, a few to several of the necessary updated
files were not updated, so everything seemed to work but in reality ... .
Since the names don't change, the only way to know if they updated or not is
to look into them at the revision levels and dates. Ymmv I'm sure.

HTH,

Pop`
 
F

FeMaster

Poprivet said:
It can be tricky sometimes, unfortunately. Usually it turns out to have
been something simple that was overlooked though.

You might have a look at these links if you haven't already:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/sp2/default.mspx
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?pr=windowsxpsp2
http://www3.telus.net/dandemar/spackins.htm

The links came from:

http://www.bootdisk.com/xptop20.htm The same info is available from
several other sites too.

The poster who said everything was fine after exitting out of a hung
install may have lucked out, but that hasn't been my experience. In the
only three cases where I've come across that, a few to several of the
necessary updated files were not updated, so everything seemed to work but
in reality ... . Since the names don't change, the only way to know if
they updated or not is to look into them at the revision levels and dates.
Ymmv I'm sure.

If it hangs where he said it did (during cleanup), then everything is
installed. I can't even begin to tell you how many systems I've had to do
this to because of whatever the strange and unusual thing is that causes the
install to hang at cleanup. If someone were to be able to figure out what
causes it, I'm sure there would be a lot of happy people.

If it hangs anywhere prior to the "Performing Cleanup", then I'd be worried
about the install, otherwise, leave it be.
 

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