Sitecore update analyze or installation freezes

When upgrading a Sitecore instance (from version 8.1 to 8.2), the update installation wizard would freeze at a certain point. This was happening with both the analyze and install option, it would always freeze around item number 535 - 540.

Sitecore update installation freezes

The event logs would display no useful information and there was nothing in the Sitecore logs. After attaching procdump to the w3wp process, it was discovered that a stack overflow exception was being raised. The debug diagnostic tool was then enabled (and set to log a full dump for stack overflow exceptions). The dump file showed that New Relic logging was causing a stack overflow each time and causing the update to freeze.

In my case disabling New Relic, allowed the update to work as expected.