Software Updates – Waiting for another installation to complete

17th January 2010 08:26
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Looking at the compliance reports I see that most of updates are installing ok but some are constantly saying “Waiting for another installation to complete”

The updates won’t install and end-users are constantly getting an error saying the another installation process is already running. It’s not another running process causing the problem, so restarting services won’t help. Information is stored in WMI and most likely is caused by an earlier installation that failed.

To fix the problem – two solutions

The drastic one – Repair WMI

  1. Log on to the client and stop the Windows Management Instrumentation Service – WMI

    image

  2. Rename the Repository folder to RepositoryOLD. The folder is found  in %systemroot%\system32\WBEM

    image

  3. Restart the Windows Management Instrumentation Service. This will create a new Repository folder and the software update installation will be able to start.

Recreating WMI will delete all history information about previous software advertisements and other Configmgr. history.

The solution I prefer

  1. Remove the affected computer for all software update deployments
  2. Update the machine policy and wait a little while (Coffee time)
  3. Add the computer back to the Update deployments
Category: Software Updates, Troubleshooting  |  Comment (RSS)

Comments (2):

  1. Frode Ersland says:
    26th September 2011 at 10:35

    Hi Kent!

    Do you know the underlying cause of this problem?

    We had many client with this problem on Windows XP pro. Not seen it yet on Windows 7. On Windows 2008 R2 SP1 we now have the problem on 1/3 of our machines! Some of them are DP so I’m a bit reluctant to delete the WBEM Repository. I have not tried your preferred solution, because we don’t have separate collections for Updates to servers (maybe I should create one). Have Microsoft a more permanent fix for this?

    Kind regards,
    Frode Ersland

    Reply
  2. wordlinks says:
    16th October 2011 at 02:19

    Sounds great! What does it mean? I’m sitting here with the same problem and could use some explanation of just three things. Steps 1, 2 and 3.

    Am I illuminating the obvious to say millions of us have to administer our machines, breaking under the failed software updates, but we aren’t MSCE. No worries, we just keep moving down the Google results list until we get an actionable solution.

    Kind regards,
    Wordy

    Reply

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