Some third-party application processes pause and resume activity. This behavior could interfere with the VSE Patch 7 upgrade process and cause the upgrade process to hang. A subsequent restart of the Microsoft Windows system leaves VSE in a non-working state. This issue can also happen during fresh installs of VSE 8.8 with Patch 7.

Indications for this issue can be seen in the VSE install logs, in particular the SysCore install log:

[%timestamp%] - StopService: Running pre stop command "C:\Program Files\Common files\McAfee\SystemCore\\DAInstall.exe -s 
[%timestamp%] - Running "C:\Program Files\Common Files\McAfee\SystemCore\\DAInstall.exe" -ds...
[%timestamp%] - Waiting for "C:\Program Files\Common Files\McAfee\SystemCore\\DAInstall.exe" -ds to complete...

The upgrade process does not continue even if you allow time to pass and the log continues to grow in size.