What to do about "File X is not in either expected pre- or post-patch state for Y" errors in install.log? For about six hours off and on my Mac has been pretty much unusable.

"softwareupdated" seems to be the culprit. It goes nuts, maxes out a CPU and uses a huge amount of RAM (and then VM once that runs out).

The "/var/log/install.log" file seems to show that it is trying to install the 10.10.4, but for approximately six hours it has just been filling the log with these two error messages over and over.

Jun 30 22:03:17 XXXXX softwareupdated[6836]: Package Authoring: File FWAVC.framework/Versions/A/FWAVC is not in either expected pre- or post-patch state for (package: com.apple.pkg.update.os.10.10.4.14E46.delta)
Jun 30 22:03:17 XXXXX softwareupdated[6836]: Package Authoring: finalSHA1String = 2276768b20f52471f8097c493254cae3f0e2f33f, digest = 1edd7f907902ac44e0d895302abe4fa7d8393e94 (package: com.apple.pkg.update.os.10.10.4.14E46.delta)


Anyone seen anything like this before or know how to deal with it? Google seems to have nothing to say on the subject.

I'm currently running the release version of 10.10.3 on a late 2013 iMac.
I managed to fix this just now by booting into safe-mode and running software update.

To boot into safe-mode, restart your computer and hold ⇧ shift during start up.