[gui-talk] update re XP SP3installation failure

[Joel Deutsch]

It's unstoppable, like the Terminator. This morning, I got a notice saying 
new updates were ready and inviting me
to download and install them. The clickable balloon that must have carried 
this message for a few seconds went silent and must have evaporated, but I 
found the icon for the same action on my system trray list. I figured maybe 
it's something else besides
the service pack. After all, people have been saying that SP3 won't be
offered as an automatic download until June.

But when I clicked on the button to accept the download in Express mode, I
got the same screen with terms and conditions I had to agree to a I remember
from yesterday, and then a screen comes up letting me know it's SP3 I'm
about to start downloading.

Oh, no! I didn't want to go through all that again, an hour or more of
downloading and installing only to be confronted with this dramatic, bonging 
Windows error message again about access denied. So I canceled out.

Ack. I need someone to explain what the failure message I got yesterday
meant by Access Denied that forced me to use the uninstall Wizard or 
whatever it's called to undo the partial  install,and whether this is 
something I can remedy myself.

--original post---

>I went to the Microsoft Updates page by clicking on the link under Tools in
> my IE 7. I was asked to install an update to my Windows Update manager
> before proceeding, which I did. So far, so good. Then I initiated the
> download and installation of the service pack, as directed, including
> something on a second screen that I found only by accident Alt tabbing
> around to see if I'd left any applications running. I hadn't, it turned
> out,
> and this other page was waiting for me to say yes to some other, related
> procedure that had to happen after SP3 was downloaded but before it could
> be
> installed.

> Okay, still everything's going ahead fine, and I heard a progress bar
> reporting the progress of the installation.

> But then I got this big boom error sound, and the only message in the
> dialogue was Access Denied, and a button to click for OK. No alternative,
> so
> I clicked it.

> Now a dialogue came up asking me to start an uninstall Wizard or something
> of the sort. Again, I had no alternative, so I clicked OK and eventually
> it
> uninstalled everything it had been installing and reconfigured the
> registry,
> and everything. Looked very responsible.

> Then I got a dialogue saying all this was finished, and that SP3 had
> failed
> to be installed, and asking me to allow it to restart my computer. Which
> worked fine, though Jaws took a year and a half to say it was ready.

> Well, nowhere in these dialogues, which I inspected with the Jaws cursor
> to
> see if I could find text that I hadn't heard, there was no indication of
> what the problem was that caused this all to happen.

> Has anyone else experienced this? Any idea how I might diagnose it and set
> things straight?

> thanks.