Exchange 2007 Rollup 8 installation takes quiet some time to finish...

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Timmy Luts Posted: 05-27-2009 12:36

I was installing RU 8 of Exchange 2007 SP1 on my test environment (first the hub/cas server) and it was taking so much time to finishing.
It looked like the installation was hanging on "creating native images for .NET assemblies...".

This was pretty enoying because it was hanging there for about 2 hours...
The actual installation finished around 2.5 hours.

I've done some googling and find out that there is away to reduce the installation time.
The reason why it takes such a long time is the following:

"The long install time was probably caused by the fact that the server was looking for an internet connection - It verifies all the .net components with crl.microsoft.com"

The easiest way around this is to edit your host file with the following info:

127.0.0.1       crl.microsoft.com

I added this to my host file on both nodes of my test cluster and the installation on both machines finished around 15-20 min.

I hope this saves a lot of exiting waiting hours for you guys when upgrading you Exchange 2007 SP1 environments...

Greetzz,

Timmy

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Tonino replied on 05-27-2009 4:06

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Thanks for the feedback and I will make that a post on the front page..

Microsoft does mentions this issue as well in their KB but they proposed a different workaround:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968012

You may experience long installation times. When this occurs, you may receive the following message:

This issue occurs because the Exchange server issues network requests to connect to crl.microsoft.com and look up the certificate revocation list at NGEN time for each assembly that it compiles to native code. Because the Exchange server is not connected to the Internet, each request must wait to timeout before moving on.

To resolve this problem, turn off the Check for publisher’s certificate revocation option on the server that is being upgraded. To do this, follow these steps:

1. In Windows Internet Explorer, click Tools, click Internet Options, click Advanced tab, and then locate the Security section.
2. Click to clear the Check for publisher’s certificate revocation check box.
3. Click OK to close the Internet Options dialog box.

It is considered safe to clear this security option in Internet Explorer if the computer is in a tightly controlled environment. After the setup has completed, turn on the Check for publisher’s certificate revocation option again.