The install that lasted a lifetime

I don't know what the softies are smoking these days, but the guys (or gals) that put together the service packs need some serious optimization lessons. I downloaded Visual Studio Service Pack 1 yesterday, all 400+ megabytes of it. Sure, it says it fixes over 2200 problems so it has to be big right? Then came the install which involved the proverbial double-clicking on the file and the subsequent waiting. And waiting. And waiting. And waiting.

Okay, I'm not running the WOPR here but it's a fairly good system. 2Ghz Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB RAM, etc. so I expect at least a little skip to my step. No so when running this crazy installer. First it had to "optimize" and "configure" my install experience, which took about 15 minutes. Then it had to install the actual update. All the time there was little disk activity, the biggest bottleneck on any system, so it's anyones guess what the system is doing.

Finally after it ran through multiple "configurations" and updated my install of Team Suite, it was done. 1 1/2 hours later. That's just plain insane for a service pack. Even SP2 for Windows XP installed quicker than that. The Visual Studio guys (and Microsoft in general) need to take some lessons from iterative development and release little patches along the way. This big bang approach really sucks as I dread the day I have repave my machine and install VS2005 again.

A couple of tips to try to keep the time down (as I've heard some people taking upwards of 3 hours for the process). Turn off everything, and I do mean "everything". If you're running a local SQL server shut down those services. Turn off any utilities that's frivolous like FolderShare and whatnot as you won't need them during the update. Shutdown messenger and kill off any extras you have running in your system tray. Also I recommend just running the service pack and nothing else. Don't try to read email or blogs during the update and maybe it'll go a little quicker for you.