Why does CheckSUR take a long time to run?
I've been asked a lot recently about the CheckSUR utility that our engineers send to customers to assist with servicing corruption issues. I typically ask that all of our engineers run this tool regardless of the "ease" of the potential fix and the utility gives us a lot of information about the state of the serviving stack when issues are present. Additionally, the tool was built around specific scenarios that we know we can fix, so this can and does resolve a lot of servicing issues just by running it.
The main question we get though is why does it take so long to run? I've heard any number of reasons but wanted to give the limiting factors when it comes to running the tool. The main thing is the spindle speed of the disk on the system you are running the tool on. This is because the CheckSUR utility comes as a packaged payload. We create the \Windows\CheckSUR directory on your system and then unpackage the contents of the utlity to your local drive before we ever run the actual tool. This takes up the majority of the time (~75-80%). The rest of the time is used for running the tool and generating the log file. If you have a large amount of corruption on the system, such as a failed service pack, then it may take a little longer but in general the tool should be usable in about 15mins from the time the installer starts.
If you need to run the utility again on the system, you should be able to just re-run the utility you've downloaded (assuming you kept it) and it will be much quicker because it doesnt need to rebuild the directories for the \Windows\CheckSUR directory and can just run the tool. All of the log files for the utility are held in the \Windows\Logs\CBS\CheckSUR.log file. We will recreate this file each time the utility is run so the only the most current entries will be in the log.
If you were unaware of the utility or would like more information on it, please see the following: https://support.microsoft.com/kb/947821
--Joseph
Comments
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
@Tim, probably because the process is locked, you could find and delete the process to stop it if you wanted to do that but I would leave it alone. Seeing as its been a while, did this ever complete normally?Anonymous
January 01, 2003
CheckSUR rarely has taken more than 15mins and I've run it literally hundreds of times with customers. I'd be interested to know what your output looks like if its taking 1.5hrs.Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Doc, Try this to fix your corruption: blogs.technet.com/.../using-checksur-and-update-packages-to-fix-corruption.aspxAnonymous
January 01, 2003
@Jack, if you want to share your CBS logs I can take a look and see what might be causing the problem.Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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January 01, 2003
Drew, Do you mean as an enterprise wide solution? Just trying to understand why you would want to use FirstLogon? --JosephAnonymous
January 01, 2003
Well part of the problem with that solution is that CheckSUR doesnt run as a standalone tool once its installed. You have to download it each time you want to use it, but the second running of the tool will take less time because the payloads will already be installed on the system. Hope that makes sense.Anonymous
January 01, 2003
@James, If its taking that long either you have a lot of corruption in servicing (or on your disk) or you have a different type of problem. I'd be interested to know the outcome unless you've decided to go with another operating system.Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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May 14, 2010
I think CheckSUR's description on the Download Center pages is confusing (I think MS just copy-pasted the description from Windows Update where it is appropriate as Windows Update actually scans computers and then offers fixes). The download center description should say "Use this tool to fix a potential inconsistency which may have developed in the Windows servicing store which may prevent the successful installation of future updates, service packs, and software." It says "an inconsistency was found" which confused me when I first read it. Then again, the design of the NT6 servicing stack needs to be changed in the future to entirely eliminate corruption, slowless, taking up so much disk space and have the ability to slipstream back.Anonymous
February 16, 2011
"We create the WindowsCheckSUR directory on your system and then unpackage the contents of the utlity to your local drive before we ever run the actual tool. This takes up the majority of the time (~75-80%)." Perhaps it is a good candidate for FirstLogonCommands?Anonymous
February 17, 2011
Yes, as an enterprise solution:
- To save time (as per this post)
- So it is just there if needed (as though it were an inbox tool) Hopefully this can be done without issue.
Anonymous
February 20, 2011
Not really! Each time i run 'start /wait wusa.exe Windows6.0-KB947821-v11-x86.msu /quiet /norestart' i get three new processes - checksur.exe, checksurlauncher.exe, CheckSURPackage.EXE. CheckSUR.log gets updated after several minutes, and info is appended to CheckSUR.persist.log. No errors reported. Also, if i firstly delete C:WindowsCheckSurv1.0* the extraction time only seems to add around a minute, but the total checksur.exe time is ~10 minutes.Anonymous
March 26, 2012
Great, now that means another hour and a half of waiting and misery.Anonymous
June 19, 2012
Its true.. its taking so much time..!! Keep Running and No idea.. What it is doing? (At least there should be some screen Like other installer where we would be knowing where we are?). I Passed approx 30mins and till now its running..Anonymous
July 24, 2012
I'm an hour in and still waiting! Good opportunity to browse for an alternate OS!Anonymous
September 23, 2012
I'm finding the same ... CheckSUR runs for at least 1.5 hours.Anonymous
October 05, 2012
I am dealing with a corrupted Vista 64 bit SP2 installation that would NOT upgrade to Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit. I found CheckSUR and began running it approximately 3 hours ago. CheckSUR has been taking about 4 to 10 percent of my quad-core processor and has been utilizing the hard disk at about 20 Mbps for the entire 3 hours. I have no idea how much longer it may take. The "Installing" status bar moved to 50 percent within 3 minutes, and has been frozen there for the last 3 hours.Anonymous
January 15, 2013
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January 24, 2013
Chiming in, I'm getting an 800B0100 error on one of my windows updates. CheckSUR ran for about 20 minutes, then stopped and gave me an installation complete message, with a close button. Ok - so I hit close and ... nothing happens. Well, what did the process do? It gave me no information. I look in my All Programs list, no mention of "System Update Readiness Tool". Tried searching for CheckSUR, no file exists. Windows Update does list that I installed a "Hotfix for Windows". I tried again to install the update that wouldn't work, but it can't. Error 800B0100. Fantastic.Anonymous
January 24, 2013
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May 21, 2013
Just cleared a large number of viruses from a customer's computer. Afterwards I found that it couldn't check for MS updates so I downloaded this hotfix. Had to do it twice, as the first time it didn't run. Second time it got to 80% complete, then did nothing for a long time. I assumed that it had frozen due to Vista corruption so I cancelled!!! Now from seeing this cvonversation I realize that I should have just let it run. Thanks Microsoft. A little message saying what the tool is, what it is doing and that it may take a long time would have really helped! Is that so difficult for Microsoft employees?Anonymous
June 18, 2013
I have to say Microsoft no longer care about their customers 15 minutes is a joke and as said by a lot of other people not knowing how much longer it will take is the worst bitAnonymous
September 04, 2013
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September 06, 2013
It's been at 80% now in the Installing Updates state for around 25minutes. Why does pressing the Stop Installation button not stop it?!