Exchange Install Disappears?

Just this week I was updating a client from Exchange 2013 CU6 to CU19. Yes, this is not a great idea and takes a bit of effort in order to do. However, I’ve done more upgrades and installs of Exchange CUs that I can count. This one was strange. One of three servers was up to date and I was in the process of now upgrading the second node of a DAG. The server was in maintenance mode with all the transport queues drained and databases mounted on other servers. It was time to upgrade. However, we had one glitch. After the Check for Updates screen, the installation would disappear…. and not come back. This issue occurred on the Cumulative Update 15 installation.

The install process disappears after the update screen (shown below):

Exchange Setup Log File
Reviewing the Exchange Setup Log file reveals just these lines from the install:
If you’ve ever reviewed an Exchange Setup Log file, you know that this isn’t correct. There should be a TON of entries …. So what is the fix?

Solution – Don’t check for updates
Just check the box that says to not check for updates:And now the install will work.

Log File – After Fix
Notice that there is additional information after the ‘Finish loading screen CheckForUpdatesPage’ and ‘Finished loading screen CopyfilesPage’. Something was not loading right in this server. Once it was skipped… the installation worked perfect.