msiexec.exe real slow

[Suxen]

*sigh*. All the official fixes have finally arrived to fix svchost.exe using up 100% of the CPU and such, related to Windows Update. One of many topics created about it is over here http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=80372 with the Knowledge Base article at Microsoft posted here (927891). I've done all this, installed the updates, etc. It no longer caused my PC to freeze up as it did before so of course I should be exceptionally happy about it as would anyone else who's suffered this bug, for what now feels like endless months, will be.

But that doesn't seem to be the end of the problems for me. Not even close. One of the pieces of advice given around the time was that a lot of files in %Windir%\Installer can cause large slowdowns and heavy resource usage. This was certainly the case for me back when I was trying to find fixes. Removing all the files in that folder made it faster to run Windows Update, but of course it also strips away the ability to change/remove applications.

So where is this connected to msiexec.exe? Well, this is just a guess - but some of the more complicated installations out there using msiexec.exe appear to take an awfully long time to run/install/remove and I'm sure it's connected to the same base problem. While it's true I'm using this for software which is more complicated to install (such as Adobe Contribute CS3), I don't believe it is anywhere near complicated enough to warrent the amount of time these installers can take to run. Like svshost.exe did, the majority of time appears to be spent with msiexec.exe taking up a lot of CPU resources while the actual activity, HD, etc, seems pretty minimal. Like the svshost.exe/wau problem, it would get there in the end, after a long long frustrating wait.

When my OS has been freshly installed, all this stuff skips along and installs/removes in no time. An entire suite of applications such as Creative Suite CS2 would absolutely not take well over an hour and a half to install or remove as it does now. I keep my drives nicely defragged, defrag the registry, disabled many services I don't need, I try not to junk up my system with applications I do not use, I've even got two HDs with the second being used for the swap file (and permanent storage of things I rarely access, but again, there's no framentation, and swap file is contineous file), and the first drive partitioned in two -one for the OS, the other for program files and things. Not likely to present much performance improvement, but it keeps stuff tidy.

So what's the word? How can I go back to perfect harmony with my computer before all this less than joyful mess started kicking in? Go back to Win2k, Win9x? Just grit my teeth, bury my frustrations, and live with it...? I can't remove all the files in %Windir%\Installer - it makes changing/repairing applications difficult (and seems to bust Microsoft Update knowing the Office patches I need, etc) when they need it which while rare, does occur from time to time - an exmple, recently Adobe Audition failed to start and the only way to fix it was seemingly to remove everything Adobe and start over. Reinstalling Audition alone didn't help, I literally had to uninstall every Adobe thing ever installed including the hidden installation entries it creates (seems that it was a conflict between two different versions of shared components or similar).

Is there just no fix out there for the amount of time msiexec.exe installers can take when your system has a number of them in the %Windir%\Installer directory? It's eventually happened across multiple OS installations. When it starts getting this way, I usually format, start over, etc. But really, I just want a system I can use, without this hassle. It wastes a lot of time when I'd rather be designing/coding for people, etc.

Hoping to hear 42,

- Suxen

Oh, and some stats:

Athlon XP 2200

512MB Ram

WinXP SP2

I know I'm not top of the range anymore, but the amount of power needed to run software installations hasn't grown that substantially and as I said already, when my OS has been reinstalled it starts off doing it fairly quick in comparison to where it lands at. Starting the uninstaller and "Requiring required information" can take awhile, etc. Even after it was done uninstalling, clicking the Finish button left me with another 100% CPU spike to wait through while the Add/Remove list was updated... super slowly.

Edited May 31, 2007 by Suxen

[cluberti]

I'd say it would be wise to gather a process monitor log of the install sequence during a "fast" install of an application, and another of the same application (preferrably on an identically configured OS/drivers/apps) when it's "slow". It'd be very interesting to see what registry and disk activity exist during the "slow" and "fast" installs, and how they are different.