Office 2003 - Slow patch installs

Hi all,

I have done quite a bit of searching but cannot find a "real" solution so I'm hoping someone here has seen the same and can help solve the problem.

Symptoms

Installing any Office 2003 FullFile Hotfix takes an *excessive* amount of time - as much as 10 minutes on some machines. During this period multiple warnings are shown in the application log:

Source:MSI Installer, Event 1015, Description: Failed to connect to server. Error: 0x800401F0

Analysis

I have run process monitor and noticed that the MSI installer seems to sit and continually spin its wheels opening and closing msimsg.dll. After approx 30 seconds of doing this it would appear to "timeout", post to the application log and then start again. Eventually it gives up and starts the actual patch installation.

My Workaround

Installing MSI 4.5 drastically reduces the time, but still leaves a lot of warnings in the eventlog.

I have read http://support.microsoft.com/kb/907341 but this just seems to indicate "hey, don't worry". I do worry when I have about 8 patches to install thus adding nearly an hour to install/patch cycles :-)

Upgrading 80,000+ clients with MSI 4.5 is possible but will require extensive testing etc.

Has anyone got a proper solution for XPSP2/XPSP3 with MSI 3.x clients?

Cheers,

Mike