FAQShop.com : Distributing Windows 2000 SP4 Fails with "A failure exit code of 1603 was returned"

Distributing Windows 2000 SP4 Fails with "A failure exit code of 1603 was returned"

I have SMS 2003 on a Windows 2000 Server with SQL2000. I am trying to deploy Windows 2000 SP4. I have built a package by downloading the Service Pack, extracting it and then setting up the package via the SMS manager and New Package. It appears that the package is created successfully and placed at the distribution point. When the advertisement is run I get the following message.

The program for advertisement "KID2000A" failed ("KID0000B" - "W2KSP4"). A failure exit code of 1603 was returned.
User context: NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM

Possible cause: Systems Management Server (SMS) determines status for each program it executes. If SMS cannot find or correlate any installation status Management Information Format (MIF) files for the program, it uses the program's exit code to determine status. An exit code of 1603 is considered a failure.
Solution: For more information on the exit code, refer to the documentation for the program you are distributing.

In addition it doesn't update the client that it is running Service Pack 4 after the install and reboot of the workstation. I'm using the update.exe -u -o -n -z -q command line options as well.

Contributed By: David Randall [MSFT]
You need to take a look at the log file created by the service pack update. The 1603 error code from MSI is just a generic failure error code. The real reason lies in your log file from the update.exe. From:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/downloads/servicepacks/sp4/spdeploy.htm

a.. Log file creation
The Update.exe program creates a log file named Svcpack.log in systemroot.
This log file contains the following information:

a.. The command-line that initiated the Update.exe program.
b.. A list of the files that the Update.exe program copied to your computer.

Hope that helps.

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