Windows Update stuck in update 5 of 8

[RizzKid]

"Installing Security Update for Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1
(KB971092) (update 5 of 8)... " Has been running for 14 hours. Disk available
was at about 4 GB, but have since moved files off, raising it to 10 GB, with
no change in status. ProcExp shows svchost.exe containing wuauclt.exe
containing VS90SP1-KB971092-x86.exe containing SPInstaller.exe consistently
doing about 10.1 KB in I/O per second. Running XP Pro SP3 with Symantec SEP.

What's my next step?

[PA Bear [MS MVP]]

Temporarily disable Symantec Endpoint Protection and/or see the "How to
obtain help" section of http://support.microsoft.com/kb/971092
--
~Robear Dyer (PA Bear)
MS MVP-IE, Mail, Security, Windows Client - since 2002

[RizzKid]

I did disable SEP, but it didn't shake anything loose. However, a lot did
happen subsequent to my posting:

- A short time after the post, update #5 of 8 failed with error 0x80242007
["took too long (more than 16 hours) and was stopped"], and the next update
in line got 0x8024200b.

- All my attempts to shut down the machine were ignored. Attempts from the
task manager and ProcExp to kill devenv.exe were also ignored. I did a hard
power-down, which finally killed Windows.

- A restart got into Windows normally, and a normal shutdown worked. The
next restart allowed me to get back into Windows Update, where I selected
only the single update (previously #5 of 8) to install. Since the update had
already been downloaded, I started by disabling SEP and my Internet
connection, then installed the single update. The disk light stayed on solid
for a long time, much longer than I would have expected, especially since the
green progress bar stayed empty, but ultimately it completed successfully.

- After another restart I installed another related update using the same
procedure. I then did some smaller updates successfully, and my pc is now
up-to-date.

- Still no clue why things were so terribly locked up, but I guess all's
well that ends well.