After the last update the files of the babel package are installed in
G:\Z-Test>kpsewhich --all hyphen.cfg D:/MiKTeX2.9/tex/tex/generic/babel/hyphen.cfg
Note the double tex/tex/ folder. The correct place should be
D:/MiKTeX2.9/tex/generic/babel/hyphen.cfg
The latest packing (aug 11) does not work as expected as well.
Extracting babel.tar.lzma on a Win 7 installation causes the error message
The operation could not be completed for the following reason:
Permission denied: E:\TeX\MiKTeX29\doc/generic/babel/CONTRIB
Details: E:\TeX\MiKTeX29\doc/generic/babel/CONTRIB
The update process works completely for all new packages when babel.tar.lzma is masked out.
"Permission denied" indicates a problem with the virus scanner in use. You could retry it with the virus scanner disabled, but I would not recommend this.
I usually
1. update my local package repository,
2. Update my installation with the update tool miktex-update.exe
3. update the packages with the package manager mpm_mfc.exe
Step 2 causes the error.
babel.tar.lzma can be extracted manually with 7-zip without any problems or virus scanner warnings (i.e. F-Secure).
The path ..\doc\generic\babel of my installation contains since years (checked with the oldest on-the-fly available backup dated 2013-05-22) two empty folders: "base" and "contrib". Apparently the empty folder "contrib" impeded the copying of the file "contrib".
I deleted the empty folders and did the update out of babel.tar.lzma manually.
Thanks, that explains it. MiKTeX should be able to somehow cope with this situation (creating a file when a directory with the same name exists).