2.7.1 Install problem

Yesterday I was in my admin area/dashboard and looked up to see that there was an update. I clicked the link and it asked if I would like to update automatically or manually. I clicked automatically, it told me it was downloading and installing and now I get a Error 500: Script Execution Failure. So I went back and downloaded manually after trying to change the wp-config.sample.php file. Same error. Why didn’t this work for me? How can I fix it?