Automatic upgrade problem

Last night I uploaded WordPress-2.7.1 (which I had downloaded a month ago on my pc) to my new host and it showed a notice for upgrading to 2.8.

I started upgrading to 2.8 and it took 4-5 minutes to upgrade, while the right part of the screen was blank. No progress bars or anything like that. I refreshed and it had been upgraded to 2.8.

I ignored that, because I thought that’s the normal procedure for upgrading. Then, Akismet needed to be upgraded and I chose to upgrade it automatically. The right part of the screen was blank again with no messages. I refreshed after 2-3 minutes had passed and it had been upgraded.

Now I chose to automatically upgrade Sociable and it’s the same thing, except it isn’t upgraded when I refresh.

Am I supposed to get a continuously loading semi-blank page when I’m automatically upgrading? Is there sth wrong with my installation or the server my blog is hosted?