Microsoft Software Installs
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Why do they almost always take ages? Example - I installed C# 2008 Express last week. This had to do some prereqs, such as installing .NET 3.5 and 2.0 SP1 and 3.0 SP1. Took ages. Yesterday, I installed Web Dev 2008. OK, so it wouldn't have to install the above prereqs so the install should be quick right? Think again. :(( Another example - compare the install times of IE 7, Firefox 2 and Opera 9? The latter two take seconds.
Kevin
The installer download is just over 2MB, total. After i launched it, it took over six minutes to determine that i didn't have any other "Live" programs installed on my machine, during which time it begged me to install other "Live" programs / set Live Search as my default search / name my first child "Live". Then, finally, it downloaded and installed the actual program. This took all of two minutes. Kinda shameful, really. Five years ago, i figured NSIS installers would look and act horribly archaic by now. Instead, i still see them as a welcome relief from the flood of awful, awful, MS installers. Good work, MS - another horrendously complex system that can't even be properly utilized by your own teams, much less anyone else.
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The installer download is just over 2MB, total. After i launched it, it took over six minutes to determine that i didn't have any other "Live" programs installed on my machine, during which time it begged me to install other "Live" programs / set Live Search as my default search / name my first child "Live". Then, finally, it downloaded and installed the actual program. This took all of two minutes. Kinda shameful, really. Five years ago, i figured NSIS installers would look and act horribly archaic by now. Instead, i still see them as a welcome relief from the flood of awful, awful, MS installers. Good work, MS - another horrendously complex system that can't even be properly utilized by your own teams, much less anyone else.
Was this using the old or new Windows Lve stuff? I've recently installed Live Mail and Live Photo Gallery and in both cases it installed only what I'd asked for.
Kevin
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Was this using the old or new Windows Lve stuff? I've recently installed Live Mail and Live Photo Gallery and in both cases it installed only what I'd asked for.
Kevin
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Why do they almost always take ages? Example - I installed C# 2008 Express last week. This had to do some prereqs, such as installing .NET 3.5 and 2.0 SP1 and 3.0 SP1. Took ages. Yesterday, I installed Web Dev 2008. OK, so it wouldn't have to install the above prereqs so the install should be quick right? Think again. :(( Another example - compare the install times of IE 7, Firefox 2 and Opera 9? The latter two take seconds.
Kevin
Well, for a large part, most microsoft software installs are slow because they check virtually every edge case imaginable, then they do backups and transactioned installs so that if there's a failure, it can roll back to its previous state. I think this accounts for about 75% of the added time to the installs.
-- Where are we going? And why am I in this handbasket?
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Why do they almost always take ages? Example - I installed C# 2008 Express last week. This had to do some prereqs, such as installing .NET 3.5 and 2.0 SP1 and 3.0 SP1. Took ages. Yesterday, I installed Web Dev 2008. OK, so it wouldn't have to install the above prereqs so the install should be quick right? Think again. :(( Another example - compare the install times of IE 7, Firefox 2 and Opera 9? The latter two take seconds.
Kevin
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Why do they almost always take ages? Example - I installed C# 2008 Express last week. This had to do some prereqs, such as installing .NET 3.5 and 2.0 SP1 and 3.0 SP1. Took ages. Yesterday, I installed Web Dev 2008. OK, so it wouldn't have to install the above prereqs so the install should be quick right? Think again. :(( Another example - compare the install times of IE 7, Firefox 2 and Opera 9? The latter two take seconds.
Kevin
Just had to install VS 2008 on my laptop - the 3GB+ download was quicker than the install!
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Whatever i just downloaded - v2008, for what that's worth. Frankly, the cross-promotion just struck me as cheesy. The incredibly long wait annoyed me.
Shog9 wrote:
the cross-promotion just struck me as cheesy
I don't see anything wrong with this, especially if you're given the choice. Google does the same with their Google Pack, so I suspect MS are just following them.
Kevin
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Well, for a large part, most microsoft software installs are slow because they check virtually every edge case imaginable, then they do backups and transactioned installs so that if there's a failure, it can roll back to its previous state. I think this accounts for about 75% of the added time to the installs.
-- Where are we going? And why am I in this handbasket?
Erik Funkenbusch wrote:
most microsoft software installs are slow because they check virtually every edge case imaginable, then they do backups and transactioned installs
So the other vendors don't bother doing this then?
Kevin
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Just had to install VS 2008 on my laptop - the 3GB+ download was quicker than the install!
A fun install is VS 2005 SP1. Chugs away for ten minutes or so and then pops up a dialog asking if you want to install SP1! :wtf: Well, no I never would have guessed! VS 2003 SP1 is similar.
Kevin
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Erik Funkenbusch wrote:
most microsoft software installs are slow because they check virtually every edge case imaginable, then they do backups and transactioned installs
So the other vendors don't bother doing this then?
Kevin
Not as far as I can tell. Typically, you can look in your temp files and examine the setup scripts as they're being generated. This will give you an idea of the stuff it's doing. I won't go so far as to say that MS's setups are over-engineered (meaning they do things they don't have to), but in many cases not doing the stuff it does is highly unlikely to cause a problem.. but they do what they do.
-- Where are we going? And why am I in this handbasket?
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A fun install is VS 2005 SP1. Chugs away for ten minutes or so and then pops up a dialog asking if you want to install SP1! :wtf: Well, no I never would have guessed! VS 2003 SP1 is similar.
Kevin
That one is particularly bad because it checks the validity of each file against it's patches. Then it does the actual patching, so basically it does the work at least twice, maybe more.
-- Where are we going? And why am I in this handbasket?
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Not as far as I can tell. Typically, you can look in your temp files and examine the setup scripts as they're being generated. This will give you an idea of the stuff it's doing. I won't go so far as to say that MS's setups are over-engineered (meaning they do things they don't have to), but in many cases not doing the stuff it does is highly unlikely to cause a problem.. but they do what they do.
-- Where are we going? And why am I in this handbasket?
Given the lengths they go to then there should have been no excuse for windows XP SP2 rendering my machine unbootable back in 2005! :mad:
Kevin
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That one is particularly bad because it checks the validity of each file against it's patches. Then it does the actual patching, so basically it does the work at least twice, maybe more.
-- Where are we going? And why am I in this handbasket?
For VS 2005 there was a command line install workaround that would complete in around 30 minutes, instead of 1-3 hours. Only problem is that if anything went wrong there would be no feedback.
Kevin
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Shog9 wrote:
the cross-promotion just struck me as cheesy
I don't see anything wrong with this, especially if you're given the choice. Google does the same with their Google Pack, so I suspect MS are just following them.
Kevin
Kevin McFarlane wrote:
I don't see anything wrong with this
:shrug: I'm not saying it's capital-E Evil, just cheesy. I mean, the thing's a glorified text editor, WordPad + POST. It's pretty and all, but come on... Throw it on the download page, then spend the time saved by writing an installer that just installs the damn thing instead of messing around with extra downloads and system checks and whatnot.
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Given the lengths they go to then there should have been no excuse for windows XP SP2 rendering my machine unbootable back in 2005! :mad:
Kevin
Well, yes and no. Microsoft warned that there were a number of pieces of malware out there that, if installed on your machine (likely without your knowledge) would corrupt the process. The problem is that malware does a lot of nasty tricks to avoid being replaced or found out.
-- Where are we going? And why am I in this handbasket?
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Well, yes and no. Microsoft warned that there were a number of pieces of malware out there that, if installed on your machine (likely without your knowledge) would corrupt the process. The problem is that malware does a lot of nasty tricks to avoid being replaced or found out.
-- Where are we going? And why am I in this handbasket?
I don't think it was caused by malware. Just bugs in SP2. I discovered one. However, it didn't completely solve the problem. There were also differences depending on how SP2 was applied, e.g., via CD or via Windows Update. The bug I discovered was applicable only to the latter.
Kevin
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A fun install is VS 2005 SP1. Chugs away for ten minutes or so and then pops up a dialog asking if you want to install SP1! :wtf: Well, no I never would have guessed! VS 2003 SP1 is similar.
Kevin
That's down to a stupid design in Windows Installer, or rather in the SAFER APIs that Windows Installer uses to verify the digital signature on the patch (which is signed in order that it can be applied by a non-administrative user). It has to page the whole damn thing into locked contiguous virtual addresses before it validates the signature. Takes ages. Details[^]
DoEvents: Generating unexpected recursion since 1991
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Why do they almost always take ages? Example - I installed C# 2008 Express last week. This had to do some prereqs, such as installing .NET 3.5 and 2.0 SP1 and 3.0 SP1. Took ages. Yesterday, I installed Web Dev 2008. OK, so it wouldn't have to install the above prereqs so the install should be quick right? Think again. :(( Another example - compare the install times of IE 7, Firefox 2 and Opera 9? The latter two take seconds.
Kevin
The joy of MSI technology! :-D
ROFLOLMFAO
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Why do they almost always take ages? Example - I installed C# 2008 Express last week. This had to do some prereqs, such as installing .NET 3.5 and 2.0 SP1 and 3.0 SP1. Took ages. Yesterday, I installed Web Dev 2008. OK, so it wouldn't have to install the above prereqs so the install should be quick right? Think again. :(( Another example - compare the install times of IE 7, Firefox 2 and Opera 9? The latter two take seconds.
Kevin
I think everybody who used the following stuff will agree with me in the following list: (Ordered from longest to shortest) * Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack (Cause By Microsoft: The SP size was reduced by making it edit existing files rather than have replacements) * Visual Studio (Makes sense though for the size of the files, although some argue this size itself makes sense) * SQL Server 2005 (The biggest question to me!) * Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (Shouldn't actually count as pre-release to now, but, I think the reason is not that but might be similar to VS2005 SP1) * SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 1 & 2 (Must be related to the time SQL Server install itself plus upgrade checks) * Internet Explorer () As you see. the list is small but really essential. Any typical developer would face most of these when flushing a machine or getting new ones. I didn't include Windows or MSDN because I believe based on the tasks performed by Windows installation, and the size of MSDN, it's just quite normal. As referred to before, the longest illogical parts of most Microsoft products installs and Windows Installer installs (MSI) in general, is the time taken for backup files. To be specific, it's NOT even the time taken to CREATE backup file, but, it's time taken to CLEAN them!!
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Why do they almost always take ages? Example - I installed C# 2008 Express last week. This had to do some prereqs, such as installing .NET 3.5 and 2.0 SP1 and 3.0 SP1. Took ages. Yesterday, I installed Web Dev 2008. OK, so it wouldn't have to install the above prereqs so the install should be quick right? Think again. :(( Another example - compare the install times of IE 7, Firefox 2 and Opera 9? The latter two take seconds.
Kevin
Look at this http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=529d992a-d69e-4c73-9213-7a7f3852c0ca&displaylang=en&tm[^] Please wait one hour after uninstalling a previous version of Windows Vista SP1 before installing Windows Vista SP1 RC Refresh. The installer service needs to clean up and complete the uninstall prior to installing the RC. Failing to do this can result in installation errors when installing the RC version. Whos gona update Vista?????? :zzz: :zzz: :zzz: :zzz: :zzz: