I’ve been meaning to patch some of my development instances. With a little spare time while doing other work, I started the process the other day. My first step was to patch SQL Server 2016 with SP2.

This went as many patches have gone for me, which is fairly boring and easy. Other than having to wait to accept the R terms and then clicking next, it was quick. Afterwards I rebooted.

Then things got interesting. I started the SQL 2017 CU6 patch. This extracted, as other patches have, but then I got a message that I wasn’t running this under enough permissions. To be clear, after extraction, the SP2 patch did give me a UAC prompt.

I stopped and then re-ran the patch, right clicking and running as administrator. After a few Nexts, I got this screen:

I haven’t seen a patch ask me to stop SSMS. I’m still not clear if this is necessary, but I did stop SSMS. The patch worked fine, and strangely, re-running the patch later didn’t produce the same messages.

Odd, but things seemed to work and my system was patched, though even without SSMS, I still had a pending reboot.

Any thoughts or explantions appreciated.