I’ve spent the last 7 hours installing Windows Small Business Server. 7 hours is a long time in life to give up for something this mundane. Yesterday, I took an hour and wiped the machine, added the disks in a drive array and prepped it for today’s install, hoping I could be on site with our customer at 1PM. Nope.

First, the Windows install needs a driver before even the first files go on the disk. That’s really not a big deal since HP warns you multiple times and provides you with a driver. The worst of it is that it requires a floppy disk. That’s because there’s no way for the setup software to recognize a USB drive, the “floppy” of the modern age. So I spent 15 minutes digging up a USB floppy drive and a blank disk, then copying the drivers and rebooting the machine. Progress!

That’s when the real work began. I’ve been feeding the machine disks for *six* hours and now I’m watching Windows Update download over 42 updates, patches and software adds. Yuck.

Some of this is expected, but 7 hours? C’mon!