Folks the trick is to leave all your core plugins activated until the last, deactivate everything else first.  Things like video, forum, groups, messages, newsfeed, photos, blog, privacy, (and even cache extreme) should all be left until the last to deactivate before the update.   The reason is many other plugins depend on those to be active so do these last. 

If you mess up and get an error DONT PANIC!!  just go to the table  ow_base_plugin in phpMyAdmin and change active to 1 on that last plugin you did by mistake and then save it.  Refresh your page and you should have your admin page back.  

Again if something happens DO NOT PANIC and make it worse.  

Then when you have everything else deactivated then deactivate in this order (just my rule ok)  groups, forum, video, blog, photos, newsfeed, privacy. 

Now the only thing left in you active section should be cache exrteme if you have it, then run your cache extreme clear the cache and then deactivate that.   

Dont forget to change to the default theme before you update. 

Once the update is done.  Then you want to do it in reverse, do the primary plugins first  and remember always do the forum before the groups.  

Once you get the 8 primary plugins activated and updated then everything else you can just do as you wish in any order (there are exceptions).  If you have two plugins from the same developer and one requires the other then of course do the main one first.  

Remember this time if you get an error when activating then you need to change the table value for that plugin to 0 for the active field then you can get your admin page back. 

Also remember that you need to check your dashboard widgets for permissions because it will change and guests can see those. Also check your pages because the same thing guests can see them.  Also once  you update your maintenance page will be turned off so turn it back on if you need to. 

Also remember that if you have special instructions in your htaccess file you will need to redo them, this could keep pages from loading until you do so. 

Hope this helps..

Happy socializing...