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On Thu, 9 Apr 2009 10:49:30 +0100 Grant Sewell wrote: > Hi all, > > Well, today was the first instalment of Microsoft Windows Server > terror at work. SBS 2008 - a routine set of "security" updates from > Microsoft were applied last night. This morning, when I came into > the office, the machine was stuck on "Configuring Updates - Stage 3 > of 3 - 0%". > > Apparently this is a well known issue and has happened with a number > of updates on a number of the Vista family of systems. > > By the look on some of their faces, I don't think they were too > pleased with my "Well, I did recommend going for a Linux server" > comments. > > *sigh* > > Back to trying to fix the bugger. > > Grant. And people wonder why us techy types like Linux or Unix systems. A Linux service fails to work after an update... what to do? Restart the service and check the relevant logs to see what it says. Maybe even have a poke through the service scripts to figure out what it is actually doing when trying to start. One way or another, you can find out what is failing and why, and since damn near everything has a conf file in plain text, you can fix the problem. All without necessarily affecting un-related services and without having to reboot. A Windows service fails to work after an update... what to do? Restart the service... oh, can't do that it depends on something else which is "stuck" in the "Starting" or "Stopping" state. Check the logs in Event Viewer... great! Got plenty of information, but it's all written in Hebrew! (Well, not literally, but it might as well be). Off to Google to find out what these Event IDs mean... but it would seem they mean nothing at all! They don't even exist! Ok, let's try restarting the "stuck" services... oops, you can't forcibly start, stop or restart a Windows service that is stuck like that... best solution so far seems to be try and kill the relevant processes... but you can't do that with TaskMan as it's rubbish, so give Proccess Explorer a try! Yay! I can kill things properly now... but, uhoh... Services MMC still says they're stuck. Closing and restarting Services MMC has no effect. Still can't tell the services to restart either with the MMC snapin or from the command line. Ok... let's try a System Restore... no restore points were created. What? I was under the impression that Windows automatically made restore points whenever an update was installed! Ok, full system restore... Sheesh! Grant (who has had far too much coffee so far today and desperately needs to go and get some lunch) -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html