Thin Installer is very slow with SCCM Task Sequenz

[mschwarzer]

Hi all,

I configure the Driver Update with Thininstaller via SCCM Tasksequenz and it is working fine, but very very slow.

It is so slow because all Thininstaller log lines were pass throuh to the SMSTS.log. (Task Sequenz log file).
It means the SMSTS.log has the same content as the Thininstaller log. This makes the task very very slow. If I run the Thininstaller manually with the same command line (without TaskSequenz), it is fast as expected.

Any Idea how to disable the log pass through from Thininstaller?

[stnz]

Same problem here. Did you ever find any solution?

Thin Installer seems to take around 40-50 minutes, tested on multiple different models.

[parkerjnc]

We're not seeing the same thing here.  A typical Win7 OS deploy using TI to put down less than 20 packages at the end is only taking about 15 minutes.

Might be helpful to have more details on how you are defining your Thin Installer items in the task sequence.  What account are you using during the install?  How many packages are in the repository?  Is the repository a network share or are you copying the packages to the target client?

[stnz]

The repository is a network share on a Windows 2008R2 server, connected through gigabit network. The server doesn't have basically any load. Mapping the network share either directly to the network share or as an SCCM package does not affect performance, it always takes around 45min.

In the repository there are around 200 packages (about 25 computer models). Thin Installer is run by using two SCCM packages. First of them contains the Thin Installer application files and a cmd file with only one line:

xcopy "%~dp0*.*" C:\Windows\ThinInst /E /Z /Y /I

So, that copies Thin Installer files to local computer. Second package is the driver store, and it also includes a cmd file to run Thin Installer:

%windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\CasPol.exe -pp off -m -ag 1.2 -url file://%~dp0* FullTrust
C:\Windows\ThinInst\ThinInstaller.exe /CM -search A -action INSTALL -noicon -includerebootpackages 1,3,4 -noreboot -repository %~dp0

I was now reading ThinInstaller log files, and it kinda looks like it just sits and waits for something for half an hour in the end..

--- clip ---

Severe    2011-10-03 , 02:35:07
    at Tvsu.Engine.DataBase.DeleteUpdateXmlInformation()
    Message: Processing the Update: 83wo13ww
Info    2011-10-03 , 02:35:07
    at Tvsu.Environment.EnvironmentManager.closeEM()
    Message: Closing Environment Manager.
Info    2011-10-03 , 02:35:07
    at Tvsu.Sdk.SuSdk.ShutDownApplication()
    Message: Shut Down the Application
Info    2011-10-03 , 03:05:06
    at Tvsu.CommandLine.CommandLineParameters.StartCommanLineParameters(String[] arguments)
    Message: Packages found, and balloon been suppressed
Info    2011-10-03 , 03:05:06
    at Tvsu.CommandLine.CommandLineParameters.StartCommanLineParameters(String[] arguments)
    Message: Installation succeeded, and reboot been suppressed

--- clip ---

[parkerjnc]

Any particular reason you are putting ThinInstaller in the C:\Windows\ThinInst folder?  I would be concerned that VSS or Windows File Protection might slow things down.  Could you try setting it up to run from C:\ThinInst  instead?

[stnz]

Yep, I can try it tomorrow, there isn't any particular reason to use that directory.

Did you check the pasted log lines? To me it looks like the program completes just fine in about 10 minutes, but then it sits doing nothing for half an hour.

[stnz]

Still same result. Now I ran it with two modifications:

1) Task sequence was modified to "Copy packages locally" instead of "Access content directly from distribution point".

2) ThinInstaller was copied to C:\ThinInst

Same result, 50 minutes runtime. This one even was a computer where Thin Installer did not find any drivers to install, and it still waited 50 minutes for something.

[stnz]

Actually, you might have been right. It seems to run faster now after moving it to C:\ThinInst from C:\Windows\ThinInst.

I'm not completely sure about that yet, but I'll confirm to this thread when I have ran it on a few different kinds of hardware and verified that it actually completes in decent time.

The latest 50min failure was not due to ThinInstaller being slow, it was due to some other mistakes/problems. File copy was taking long time, not ThinInstaller process.

[parkerjnc]

I'm also curious what user context you are executing Thin Installer under?  Is it the System account or is it an actual domain administrator account or local machine administrator account?

[stnz]

It was running as System, like any normal SCCM task sequence command-line command.

Anyway, seemed to speed up after moving it to C:\ThinInst. Now it is taking decent 10-15min.