Update from 10.14.3 10.14.5 Failed - Hung During Installation

[jreeve0805]

I had a similar issue where the update froze on the first installation screen always with 27 minutes remaining. I got around it by applying the 10.14.5 combo update to a 10.14.4 clone which then booted into 10.4.5 and everything worked including the USB patch.

When you say you applied it to a clone do you mean you had a CCC backup or something on another disk, and you ran the installer on that backup disk?