Platform: Windows Server 2003 and XP

I've always been a bit irritated that Microsoft's "improvements" in their installers in the recent desktop and server OS's were nothing more than removing of details. This past week I was doing an in-place upgrade of a 2000 server to 2003. I plopped the disc in after checking compatibilities (I resolved all of them) and fired up winnt32.exe. Well, we were stuck at "24 minutes" remaining. The drives kept blinking in unison, like there was some activity. I was patient, far more patient than I normally am. Anyhow, the installation of 2003 appeared to be hung. Eventually I threw the power (shudder!) on the install. I was suspecting hardware issues, so I disabled some stuff (NIC, etc.). I restarted the upgrade (basically, turn the machine back on and it restarts the setup from the first reboot). It got stuck again at "24 minutes remaining." Panic starts to set in (it's a production document management server). First rule of giving up--you never give up, you try something else. Much Google time ensued. Eventually, I ran across this jewel of a tip: While running the installer of 2k3 or XP, you can hit shift-F11 to bring up a dialog of WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON. This doesn't work during all stages of the install, mind you, but when it's copying files or "configuring your server" you'll actually see what's hanging up. In my case, this machine was absolutely stuck on the frontpage extensions for the IIS installation (a frequent problem for 2k to 2k3 upgrades). So, it's stuck, how do you fix it? Well, it turns out Shift-F10 will bring up a command window (or DOS box, if you're old school like me). Ah-hah! From here we can use taskmgr to bring up task manager. I noodled through the running apps, and I found one that was running that seemed like the one (appcfgwiz.exe or something like that, I forget the exact). I kill that, the configuration of frontpage extensions stops, and the install completes. I don't need the extensions, and the machine came up without any other issues I could identify. Keep those magic keys ready--you'll need them someday. This is reported to work in XP as well. I don't see why you would disable this on 2003 server. I mean, if you're smart enough to be upgrading or installing 2k3 servers, shouldn't you be smart enough to watch the details?