Monday, September 19, 2011

How to install Update Rollup 4-v2 for Exchange Server 2010 SP1 Faster

This post is purely based on my recent experiences in installing the Update Rollup 4-v2 on a number of Exchange 2010 servers with my team. With default settings and via regular Windows Update interface, it takes about 45 minutes to 70 minutes to install this 30MB hotfix on decent (12 cores and 64GB RAM) physical boxes. On the other hand we found that if the update is downloaded as a separate package from MS download site (http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=26910) and run in an elevated command prompt (cmd.exe, runas administrator) it only takes about 10 minutes to finish the installation. We also found that temporarily disabling UAC reduced the installation duration to 10 minutes, even via the regular Windows Update interface.

I also "googled" this issue and our resolution but could not find anything so far. Therefore I cannot explain why running the update in an elevated command prompt or disabling UAC speeds up the process.

Finally if you experience the same thing with this Update Rollup (or any other update) please share your experience here using the comment link.