I spent yesterday getting my last SBS client up to SP1.  Yeah, I know SP2 is now out, and I doubt I'll wait as long to roll it out, but right now I'm taking a wait and see approach and let my peers work out the kinks ;-)

So getting back on topic, the upgrade went smoothly and everything looked really good.  I had a few hardware changes to implement, BIOS, Firmware, etc., but all in all pretty straightforward.  All of the patches had been applied and then I took that last pass through Microsoft Update.  Waiting for me was the aforementioned SP2 and IE7.  Well, I normally don't surf the 'net from a server, except to go to Microsoft Update, pull down a hardware patch from a vendor site, etc.  Even so, I felt it made sense to load IE7 because of it's additional security features, phishing checks etc.  So I kick off the download and everything goes smoothly.  At the end it's time for a reboot.  After the server comes back up, I log in and get the expected little "pop-up" that says it's setting up my personalizations.  Problem is it stayed that way for the next 20 minutes (When I saw it pop up I went off to complete an update on one of the desktops and came back to wrap up the server).  So when it was still there after 20 minutes I knew something was wrong. I started digging around with Task Manager (Since it was "stuck" I had no desktop, explorer, etc.).  When nothing obvious showed up, I decided to log off and back on, on the off chance it was a one time glitch.

So logging back in, I'm right back where I left off.  So in digging around logs after I killed the process (and still had no desktop) I saw a reference to Java.  That brought back a memory of one of the things I did at the start.  I had uninstalled the really old version of Java that was on the server during my cleanup process prior to kicking off the SP1 install.  Well guess what!  IE7 doesn't like the lack of Java support, hence the "hang".  So I figured no big deal, I'll grab the latest Java and install it.

Now comes the "fun" part of the story.  Without a desktop and IE7 hanging, there's no way to get out to Sun's Java site.  So I figure I'll go to it from one of the desktops and then drop it on the server.  From there I could use the "New Task" feature of Task Manager to execute the java installation app, The problem is that if java is already installed on the machine you're using then you can't get there from here as it takes you to the "verify installation" page. So I do a Live Search for "Sun Java download" and on the list of 'hits" is the manual download page, located here, http://www.java.com/en/download/manual.jsp. I download the version for Windows and head back to the server. I bring up Task Manager, click on File-->New Task and browse to the Java download.  I execute the application and as soon as it finishes the IE7 personalization finishes and I'm at my desktop. Whew!

So what did I learn from all of this?  That I shouldn't throw things in at the last minute.  That I should review my plan before starting and then see if there's anything I want to add.  If so, then add it at that time and put it on the checklist.  So you can bet from now on, I'll make sure Java is on the system prior to trying to install IE7 and that if I remove an old version of an app that I make sure I either have an updated version or I know that I won't need it again.