Anaconda installs VERY slowly

The Toolkit General Discussion
1

I’ve noticed that some applications install very slowly with PSADT when building an image with MDT. Today the culprit is Anaconda. If I run the install directly from the same location that the task sequence uses, it takes just a few minutes. When run through PSADT it takes over an hour.

Execute-Process -Path 'Anaconda3-2023.09-0-Windows-x86_64.exe' -Parameters '/InstallationType=AllUsers /S'  -WindowStyle 'Hidden'

Have any of you run into this issue before? Any suggestions for troubleshooting? I build the images on a Hyper-V VM.

Andy

2

Maybe try to make the Anaconda installer create log files.

When you " install directly from the same location" do you run it as SYSTEM or elevated user?
When you " run through PSADT" do you run it as SYSTEM or elevated user?

3

When installing directly I run as admin through the right-click menu of the exe. When installing through the MDT task sequence using PSADT, I don’t make any specific changes from whatever is default. I assume that would be elevated.

I’ll look into creating the log files.

Thanks for your reply.
Andy

4

So you run as SYSTEM with PSADT.

If you " install directly from the same location" it probably extracts files to %temp%

When you run as SYSTEM, the SYSTEM profile has TWO %temp% folders.
One for 32bit processes and one for 64Bit processes.

I’m betting your Anaconda3-2023.09-0-Windows-x86_64.exe:
-runs as 64bit
-Extracts to the 64Bit %temp% folder
-Launches a 32bit process that looks for the extracted files in the 32bit %temp%
-The files it needs are not in the 32bit %temp% folder, they are in the 64Bit %temp% folder.

5

Thank you. I think I understand what you’re saying. I’m less clear about how I should solve it though. Would it be as simple as using Execute-ProcessAsUser instead of Execute-Process?

6

There are 2 ways to solve this:

  1. Extract Anaconda3-2023.09-0-Windows-x86_64.exe and launch the setup.exe directly.

  2. Temporarily merge the SYSTEM profile’s TWO %temp% folders. I had an idea on how to do this years ago but I forgot.

7

Since 7-zip is telling me “not implemented” when trying to extract the exe so I guess I’ll have try option 1. I’m familiar with the location of %temp%. Where would I find the other “%temp%” folder? Or is it application specific?

8

I did some digging.

I am wrong about the 2 Temp folders:
%Temp% for SYSTEM points to C:\Windows\Temp

HOWEVER, there are still 2 SYSTEM Profile locations:

C:\Windows\system32\config\systemprofile\
C:\windows\syswow64\config\systemprofile\

Both Profiles have \AppData\ folders
and some installers will use the \AppData\ folder to extract installation files.

When the \AppData\ folder is used, it causes issues when running as SYSTEM.

9

Thank you again. I ran a couple of tests and it looks like either way the cache is created in C:\ProgramData\Anaconda3\Pkgs. I’ll look into the appdata folders to see what I can find tomorrow.