I don’t usually rush to apply service packs (i.e. ‘if it ain’t broke…’). Usually the fixed items don’t apply to what I do. So when SAP notified me about SP3 for CR 2016 I was ready to ignore it for a while. But I read through the list of fixes anyway, just in case, and the second to last item was something useful. It corrects a scrolling bug in the formula editor so we can now use the mouse wheel to scroll up and down in long formulas. I decided to do the update right away since I write lots of long formulas.

But the update was a hassle. It starts with 5 minutes of extracting files and then immediately pops up a “Fatal” error:

“Fatal Error: At least one port in the range 4520-4539 must be opened for the installation to proceed. …”

So why would a service pack for a locally installed app require access to ports? After a few searches I found that this is a red herring error message. It also occurs on some full Crystal Reports installs. The keys to getting past this error on a full install are to:

1) Run the setup from the Root folder
2) Use “Run as an administrator”.

But the service pack is a self extracting compressed exe. Placing the exe in C:\ and running it as administrator didn’t solve the problem for me. What worked for me in both Win 10 and Win 8.1 was to:

1) Use an Unzip utility (e.g. 7zip) to extract the compressed files/folders into a new folder.
2) Put this new folder in C:\.
3) Run the Setup.exe in this folder as an administrator.

Even then there was another snag.  The install couldn’t finish because of a “suppressed reboot”:

“A reboot request was suppressed on the local machine.
Reboot the machine in order to proceed with the installation”

But it wasn’t clear how to do this. My only options were “retry” and “cancel”.  So I canceled, did a manual reboot and then ran the setup.exe a second time.  That allowed the SP to install and now I can scroll through my formulas.  It was just much more work than I expected.

Update 10/2/2018:

One of my readers just pointed out their own blog post about installing CR 2016 and having the same exact issues.   Had I seen that post when writing this one my post would have been a link to his.