SCCM SP2 Update Hanging on ‘Initialize Configuration Manager site’.

During an SP2 upgrade of a System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R2, I noticed that the installation was taking a lot longer than I thought it should. The installation screen was still active (the progress bar was scrolling along as normal) but the task had not moved on from Initialize Configuration Manager site in some time. Over two hours in fact.

Reviewing the C:\ConfigMgrSetup.log file revealed that the install had indeed stalled and the last couple of entries in my logfile looked like this.

08-04-2010 12:55:21 Enabling monitoring for inbox def Status Manager.
08-04-2010 12:55:21 Enabling monitoring for inbox def Scheduler (LAN Outbox).
08-04-2010 12:55:21 Enabling monitoring for inbox def Scheduler (Requests).
08-04-2010 12:55:21 Enabling monitoring for inbox def Data Loader.
08-04-2010 12:55:21 Enabling monitoring for inbox def Software Inventory Processor (Site).
08-04-2010 12:55:21 Enabling monitoring for inbox def Despooler.
08-04-2010 12:55:21 Enabling monitoring for inbox def Replication Manager (Incoming).
08-04-2010 12:55:21 Enabling monitoring for inbox def Discovery Data Manager.
08-04-2010 12:55:21: Status Modules\Status Modules
08-04-2010 12:55:21: Components Status Module: SMS Server\Components
08-04-2010 12:55:21: Components Status Module: SMS Client\Components
08-04-2010 12:55:21: Components Status Module: SMS Provider\Components

After some research, I discovered that the reason this was occurring was I had a huge collection of .CCR files within the ccr.box folder on my site server. When I say huge collection, I mean over a million files. After deleting them all, which took around 30 minutes, the installation jumped right to the next stage.

It’s worth noting, the .CCR files were actually in a sub-folder of ccr.box, so I’m assuming that SCCM SP2 update searches for all .CCR files in the complete ccr.box folder hierarchy.