unfinished service pack installation

[badgolferman]

I installed Service Pack 1 a few weeks ago and everytime the laptop
reboots it goes through a message countdown saying to wait until
service pack finishes installation and starts from 35% and goes to 37%
before the log in window appears.

The Control Panel Programs applet shows the Service Pack as having
installed successfully and will not allow uninstallation, presenting
all sorts of error messages when attempted. I tried reinstalling the
Service Pack with Windows Update and manually after downloading it but
they fail too.

The only good clue I have found is the System Log telling me the
Windows Modules Installer service has terminated unexpectedly hundreds
of times.

The company tech support has no idea what the problem is and wants to
wipe the whole system clean with a ghost install but I am hesitant to
do that since my system is not crippled once I log in. Hopefully
someone here has a solution to this problem.

Windows 7 Enterprise 64-bit

Successful Installation
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/835/windowsupdatehistory.jpg/

Failed reinstall:
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/696/sp1fail.jpg/

Failed uninstall:
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/806/uninstallfail.jpg/

System Event log:
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/12/systemevent.jpg/

 

[Peter Foldes]

I installed Service Pack 1 a few weeks ago and everytime the laptop
reboots it goes through a message countdown saying to wait until
service pack finishes installation and starts from 35% and goes to 37%
before the log in window appears.

With those error messages and error numbers it is pointing to trying to install 32
bit SP1 to a 64 bit system or the other way around

--
Peter
Please Reply to Newsgroup for the benefit of others
Requests for assistance by email can not and will not be acknowledged.
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
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[badgolferman]

With those error messages and error numbers it is pointing to trying
to install 32 bit SP1 to a 64 bit system or the other way around

The original installation was done via Windows Update. I assume it
would know what version must be installed. Did you see the screenshot
showing a successful installation? Subsequent error messages are
attempts at reinstallation or uninstallation. The System Log
screenshot has nothing to do with those though. It's just a mess from
the original installation I think.

Do you know how I can get it to stop trying to finish the installation
during bootup?

 

[Peter Foldes]

Peter Foldes wrote:


The original installation was done via Windows Update. I assume it
would know what version must be installed. Did you see the screenshot
showing a successful installation? Subsequent error messages are
attempts at reinstallation or uninstallation. The System Log
screenshot has nothing to do with those though. It's just a mess from
the original installation I think.

Do you know how I can get it to stop trying to finish the installation
during bootup?

I stand by what I said. You can try and uninstall the Service Pack from Add\Remove
and then try and download and install the proper bit version that will match your OS

--
Peter
Please Reply to Newsgroup for the benefit of others
Requests for assistance by email can not and will not be acknowledged.
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
http://www.microsoft.com/protect

 

[Paul]

The original installation was done via Windows Update. I assume it
would know what version must be installed. Did you see the screenshot
showing a successful installation? Subsequent error messages are
attempts at reinstallation or uninstallation. The System Log
screenshot has nothing to do with those though. It's just a mess from
the original installation I think.

Do you know how I can get it to stop trying to finish the installation
during bootup?

I wonder if your "Catastrophic Failure 0x8000FFFF" is related to setting
a Restore Point ? Maybe the installer requests a Restore Point be set,
whatever software does System Restore answers with "Catastrophic Failure"
and the install just passes that error message along ? Do you have System
Restore enabled at the moment ? There are a few reasons for SR to fail,
some of which are mentioned here. There are also third party applications
known to break SR, so the info here isn't exhaustive.

http://social.technet.microsoft.com.../thread/12ab006e-721e-40c0-9da8-acae7d7a92d3/

The reason I say that, is generally speaking, the many reports of troubles
with SP1, usually lead to it "unwinding" itself naturally. Given the
philosophy of the installer, to be able to undo what it's done, it
seems unlikely the installer itself would declare a Catastrophic Failure,
because that means all pf its fine logic has been defeated. That's why I'm guessing
the error is coming from somewhere else, and the side effects of the failure
at causing problems "moving forward or moving backwards".

*******

I just did Win7 x64 SP1 on my laptop yesterday, and was careful to make a backup
before starting. Runtime was 43 minutes for the installer portion, plus
9 more minutes of "do not turn off your computer" type fun. But at least
it finished. The only negative thing I'd have to say about it, is the
way it handled dialogs wasn't very good. I was expected to go to the
Task Bar, and notice there was an iconified dialog asking for permission
to proceed. At first, I couldn't tell what was going on, and had to fire up
Task Manager, to see if I'd even double clicked the damn file properly.

Before starting, I turned off my AV software. And I didn't do it from Windows Update.
I downloaded the 900MB+ installer from Microsoft so it would all be on disk.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=c3202ce6-4056-4059-8a1b-3a9b77cdfdda

windows6.1-KB976932-X64.exe 903.2MB

Doing it from Windows Update is more economical, because that 900MB thing
likely has several different versions inside it, and the byte count for
doing it through WU is only a fraction of that. But if the process fails,
its more comforting to have the whole chunk sitting in front of you,
rather than staring at something that is stuck for hours on end, and
has only half finished its "network business".

Paul

 

[badgolferman]

I wonder if your "Catastrophic Failure 0x8000FFFF" is related to
setting a Restore Point ? Maybe the installer requests a Restore
Point be set, whatever software does System Restore answers with
"Catastrophic Failure" and the install just passes that error message
along ? Do you have System Restore enabled at the moment ? There are
a few reasons for SR to fail, some of which are mentioned here. There
are also third party applications known to break SR, so the info here
isn't exhaustive.

http://social.technet.microsoft.com.../thread/12ab006e-721e-40c0-9da8-acae7d7a92d3/

The reason I say that, is generally speaking, the many reports of
troubles with SP1, usually lead to it "unwinding" itself naturally.
Given the philosophy of the installer, to be able to undo what it's
done, it seems unlikely the installer itself would declare a
Catastrophic Failure, because that means all pf its fine logic has
been defeated. That's why I'm guessing the error is coming from
somewhere else, and the side effects of the failure at causing
problems "moving forward or moving backwards".

*******

I just did Win7 x64 SP1 on my laptop yesterday, and was careful to
make a backup before starting. Runtime was 43 minutes for the
installer portion, plus 9 more minutes of "do not turn off your
computer" type fun. But at least it finished. The only negative thing
I'd have to say about it, is the way it handled dialogs wasn't very
good. I was expected to go to the Task Bar, and notice there was an
iconified dialog asking for permission to proceed. At first, I
couldn't tell what was going on, and had to fire up Task Manager, to
see if I'd even double clicked the damn file properly.

Before starting, I turned off my AV software. And I didn't do it from
Windows Update. I downloaded the 900MB+ installer from Microsoft so
it would all be on disk.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=c3202ce6-4056-4059-8a1b-3a9b77cdfdda

windows6.1-KB976932-X64.exe 903.2MB

Doing it from Windows Update is more economical, because that 900MB
thing likely has several different versions inside it, and the byte
count for doing it through WU is only a fraction of that. But if the
process fails, its more comforting to have the whole chunk sitting in
front of you, rather than staring at something that is stuck for
hours on end, and has only half finished its "network business".

Paul

That is the version of SP1 I have been trying to install manually. It
fails also, presumably because Windows thinks it has already been
installed as evidenced by the Add/Remove Programs applet or whatever
it's called these days. Trying to uninstall SP1 from the applet is
impossible also. I am stuck in a loop. System Restore does not
provide a restore point far back enough to the date when SP1 was
installed.

What I would like to know is if there is a place in the registry where
an entry has not been removed during installation which causes the
bootup message. I've checked the Run and RunOnce sections for any
clues but to no avail so far.

 

[Paul]

That is the version of SP1 I have been trying to install manually. It
fails also, presumably because Windows thinks it has already been
installed as evidenced by the Add/Remove Programs applet or whatever
it's called these days. Trying to uninstall SP1 from the applet is
impossible also. I am stuck in a loop. System Restore does not
provide a restore point far back enough to the date when SP1 was
installed.

What I would like to know is if there is a place in the registry where
an entry has not been removed during installation which causes the
bootup message. I've checked the Run and RunOnce sections for any
clues but to no avail so far.

Have you by chance prepared a "system image". I was making some of those
the other day, as intermediate steps in the installation of SP1. Basically,
I wanted to snapshot the C: partition after particular steps. The output was
two ".vhd" files, on my portable backup drive. One was 28GB (the C: partition)
while the other was less than 100MB (the boot partition or so-called System Reserved).

If you had those, and the dates looked in the right ballpark (not too far back,
as you'd lose data files as well), you might be able to load those in place
of C:. This is like a giant version of System Restore, only it takes everything
back to the date you made the image. If it was 3 months old, you'd lose 3 months
of data files and email. The image is actually accessible, so you can extract
files from it. This is only really a useful approach, if you made one two days
ago.

*******

Otherwise, try this page.

"How to uninstall Windows 7 Service Pack 1"
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/uninstall-sp1

wusa.exe /uninstall /kb:976932

Now, doing that is only going to work, if you're running the
OS on the C: partition. If you boot from the Recovery CD
(which can give you a command prompr), and you're not logged into
a partition, I think you're basically working on a partition called
X: which is the C: drive of the Recovery CD.

I bet you've already tried actual Safe Mode (pressing F8 at
startup). Perhaps if you could get into Safe Mode, you could
try the wusa thing.

There is a reference to using wusa here, both from Safe Mode and
from Command Prompt of the Recovery CD (X.

http://forums.riftgame.com/archive/index.php/t-117156.html

And for God's sake, do a backup before your next step. Even if it means
booting a Linux LiveCD and copying the entire disk.

Also, whatever that uninstaller (wusa) is using, is indexed by the KB number.
You might try sniffing around the partition for 976932 (or whatever the
version of SP1 was that you used). Perhaps that would be proof that the
thing was ready to uninstall. I'd probably load a Linux CD and do that,
as it has a web browser I can use to get help from the search engines.

Also, there should be plenty of references to failures out there,
so the search engines are your friends. One of the reasons I waited
so long to do SP1, is to make sure the path was well trodden by
others first.

Paul

 

[badgolferman]

Have you by chance prepared a "system image". I was making some of
those the other day, as intermediate steps in the installation of
SP1. Basically, I wanted to snapshot the C: partition after
particular steps. The output was two ".vhd" files, on my portable
backup drive. One was 28GB (the C: partition) while the other was
less than 100MB (the boot partition or so-called System Reserved).

If you had those, and the dates looked in the right ballpark (not too
far back, as you'd lose data files as well), you might be able to
load those in place of C:. This is like a giant version of System
Restore, only it takes everything back to the date you made the
image. If it was 3 months old, you'd lose 3 months of data files and
email. The image is actually accessible, so you can extract files
from it. This is only really a useful approach, if you made one two
days ago.

*******

Otherwise, try this page.

"How to uninstall Windows 7 Service Pack 1"
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/uninstall-sp1

wusa.exe /uninstall /kb:976932

Now, doing that is only going to work, if you're running the
OS on the C: partition. If you boot from the Recovery CD
(which can give you a command prompr), and you're not logged into
a partition, I think you're basically working on a partition called
X: which is the C: drive of the Recovery CD.

I bet you've already tried actual Safe Mode (pressing F8 at
startup). Perhaps if you could get into Safe Mode, you could
try the wusa thing.

There is a reference to using wusa here, both from Safe Mode and
from Command Prompt of the Recovery CD (X.

http://forums.riftgame.com/archive/index.php/t-117156.html

And for God's sake, do a backup before your next step. Even if it
means booting a Linux LiveCD and copying the entire disk.

Also, whatever that uninstaller (wusa) is using, is indexed by the KB
number. You might try sniffing around the partition for 976932 (or
whatever the version of SP1 was that you used). Perhaps that would be
proof that the thing was ready to uninstall. I'd probably load a
Linux CD and do that, as it has a web browser I can use to get help
from the search engines.

Also, there should be plenty of references to failures out there,
so the search engines are your friends. One of the reasons I waited
so long to do SP1, is to make sure the path was well trodden by
others first.

Paul

Paul,

Thank you for your assistance. I have already tried most of what you
suggest in your previous message sans the image restoration which I
don't have. After reading the link you provided to the MS site showing
how to uninstall SP1 I think I have discovered why I cannot uninstall
Windows 7 SP1.

"If you've used Disk Cleanup since installing SP1, the backup files
needed to uninstall the service pack might have been deleted from your
computer. To remove the service pack, you'll need to reinstall Windows
7. For installation information, see Installing and reinstalling
Windows 7."

This explains why no updates are visible for uninstallation under the
Programs applet of the Control Panel. The attempt at uninstalling
using the Command Prompt is what provides the catastrophic failure
message you saw earlier.

I saw an MS knowledge base article earlier talking about a file titled
Pending.xml regarding updates and the order they must be done, or
something like that. The SP1 update can be seen in that file on my
computer and perhaps that file can be edited to remove the reference to
it but I am hesitant to mess with it. At this point I think I will
have to live with the problem or let the IT support reinstall Windows.
Just don't ever let me do a Disk Cleanup again!

 

[Dave-UK]

I saw an MS knowledge base article earlier talking about a file titled
Pending.xml regarding updates and the order they must be done, or
something like that. The SP1 update can be seen in that file on my
computer and perhaps that file can be edited to remove the reference to
it but I am hesitant to mess with it. At this point I think I will
have to live with the problem or let the IT support reinstall Windows.
Just don't ever let me do a Disk Cleanup again!

Apparently you can delete Pending.xml :
http://social.technet.microsoft.com...l/thread/3ad97980-97d5-4131-9a10-76984dc48de5

 

[Paul]

Paul,

Thank you for your assistance. I have already tried most of what you
suggest in your previous message sans the image restoration which I
don't have. After reading the link you provided to the MS site showing
how to uninstall SP1 I think I have discovered why I cannot uninstall
Windows 7 SP1.

"If you've used Disk Cleanup since installing SP1, the backup files
needed to uninstall the service pack might have been deleted from your
computer. To remove the service pack, you'll need to reinstall Windows
7. For installation information, see Installing and reinstalling
Windows 7."

This explains why no updates are visible for uninstallation under the
Programs applet of the Control Panel. The attempt at uninstalling
using the Command Prompt is what provides the catastrophic failure
message you saw earlier.

I saw an MS knowledge base article earlier talking about a file titled
Pending.xml regarding updates and the order they must be done, or
something like that. The SP1 update can be seen in that file on my
computer and perhaps that file can be edited to remove the reference to
it but I am hesitant to mess with it. At this point I think I will
have to live with the problem or let the IT support reinstall Windows.
Just don't ever let me do a Disk Cleanup again!

I must have missed the part where you did Disk Cleanup. Now, I
used Disk Cleanup too, because that was all part of my experiment.
The idea was, to install SP1, do a couple reboots, then use CleanMgr
(Disk Cleanup) because there is a "feature" buried in there that
claims to clean up WINSXS after you're happy with a Service Pack.
If you select that option, you cannot remove SP1. Now, I've pulled
the trigger on that one, because I have a total of around six images
taken during the experiment. One of the images is taken after
SP1 is installed, another image after Disk Cleanup and so on.

I guess I don't understand how you could sandwich a Disk Cleanup in
there, if the install isn't finished.

What I was doing, was working on another question about WINSXS folder
and how it "bloats" with time. What I found is, that after installing
SP1 and doing Disk Cleanup, my system had actually bloated by "only"
1.2GB. Which is a far cry from the pessimistic results you get, if
monitoring WINSXS itself.

WINSXS is filled with "hard links", meaning there are two or more
pointers to the data representing a file. Say for example, you want
four copies of a file, but only want to pay for actually storing only
one copy. With hard links, you make four "pointers" in the file system,
all pointing at the same clusters of data. Deleting any one of the pointers
doesn't change anything. Only when the reference count goes to zero, does
the data get deleted.

In a quick check I did after the experiment, I counted maybe 40,000 files
in WINSXS. Of those, I think maybe 1500 had only a single reference
to them. And at least some of the files, were for Windows Ultimate
(which is not my version). So no other parts of the file system referenced
such a file. There were also a lot of font files that were sitting there
lonely as well (perhaps part of supporting multiple languages). For the
majority of files, there were multiple pointers to them. I didn't check
what the max of that was, but the first one I checked had five pointers.

The idea of WINSXS is like a filing cabinet containing a "reference to
everything". I guess you could call it a database, for want of a
better description. I don't really understand how it's an "advantage"
to do it that way. A real database would do much the same thing, but
without the side effect of scaring people when they check the
size of WINSXS.

If you stare at WINSXS all the time, and right click and do properties,
the size calculated by doing that, is meaningless. Explorer really needs
a different kind of feature, where it lists "unique" file size content
and "shared" file size content. The "shared" would refer to files with
hard links.

The only way I know of, without paying for some kind of fancy utility,
is to run a System Image (making a .vhd from C and using the size
of the .vhd file as a metric for file system size. By doing that,
I can compare C: from before SP1 to after SP1. And by running Disk
Cleanup, and eliminating the possibility of uninstalling SP1, the
"bloat" only amounts to another 1.2GB. It's still not good, because
at least one Microsoft web page was claiming space would be recovered
after a Service Pack, implying the cleanup effort would be better
than it apparently is.

This is all part of me wanting to keep C: in a 40GB space. And I'm
still doing that. It still fits.

Paul

 

[H-Man]

That is the version of SP1 I have been trying to install manually. It
fails also, presumably because Windows thinks it has already been
installed as evidenced by the Add/Remove Programs applet or whatever
it's called these days. Trying to uninstall SP1 from the applet is
impossible also. I am stuck in a loop. System Restore does not
provide a restore point far back enough to the date when SP1 was
installed.

What I would like to know is if there is a place in the registry where
an entry has not been removed during installation which causes the
bootup message. I've checked the Run and RunOnce sections for any
clues but to no avail so far.

I had this happen once in XP. If Win7 is anything the same there's a file
you need to delete. not sure which one anymore, I spent a long time
googling for that one. Sorry I can't be of more help.