Error message when you try to install an update for 2007 Office programs or Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 if the Windows system drive has insufficient free disk space: "The installation of this package failed"

You try to install an update for 2007 Office programs or for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 on a computer that has insufficient free disk space on the Windows system drive. In this scenario, the upgrade fails, and you receive the following error message: For example, this problem occurs when you install the 2007 Microsoft Office suites SP1 or the 2007 Microsoft Office suites SP2 on the Windows system drive, and the Windows System drive has less than 500 megabytes (MB) of free disk space.

When you install an update, the package extracts the files to the %SystemDrive%\Temp folder. For example, for the 2007 Microsoft Office suite service pack, the extracted files use about 300 MB of disk space. Additionally, Windows Installer caches two copies of the extracted files on the Windows system drive during the installation. Therefore, if you download the package to the Windows system drive, the Windows system drive requires more free space to run the package.

Microsoft Self-Extractor packages only verify that the Windows system drive has sufficient free disk space for the extracted files. Microsoft Self-Extractor packages do not verify the other disk space requirements for the installation.

To resolve this problem, make sure that you have sufficient free disk space on the Windows system drive before you run the update. The actual amount of free disk space depends on the size of update that the package installs. Typically, the free disk space that is required to run a Microsoft Self-Extractor package is five or six times the size of the package.

We recommend that you move the package to another drive. Then, run the package to start the installation.

To install an update, the Windows system drive must have at least 1.1 gigabytes (GB) of free disk space on a Windows XP-based computer. On a Windows Vista-based computer, the Windows system drive must have at least 1.75 GB of free disk space. For the best performance when you install an update , we recommend that the Windows system drive have at least 3 GB of free disk space.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed in the "Applies to" section.

For more information about the command-line switches of a Microsoft Self-Extractor package, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: