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Windows Installer Fails To Initiate System Restart


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irowoli

irowoli
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Posted 14 July 2004 - 18:19

Lately, we have run into a problem when reinstalling some software. It is a random problem that shows up once in a while. Our software is packaged using Installshield Professional 5.5 Installscript, and we execute some uninstalls/installs of msi packages within the Installscript. When reinstalling in order to upgrade or reinstall our software, we start our installation process by clicking a Setup.exe, which does a couple of things, stops services, then tries to uninstall the current software. In our install script, we call the uninstall of a number of msi packages that had been previously installed. It seems that the uninstall of one of these packages sometimes causes a system restart to be initialized. When it does this, we get an error message:

Title: msiexec.exe - DLL Initialization Failed
The application failed to initialize because the window station is shutting down.

A window also appears behind it with a progress bar showing our Installshield project is ending. Lets say our Installshield project is named Install Project. The window is thus titled: End Program - Install Project.
When the progress bar completes, and after clicking OK to the msiexec message above and another (evidently produced as a result of the first one) that appears, Install Project continues! i.e. the system doesn't restart. At the end of the install, not all the files expected were copied for the subsequent reinstall of the aforementioned msi package. On looking in the Application Event Log, we see the following message:

The Windows Installer initiated a system restart to complete or continue the configuration of 'Application'.

(where 'Application' is the name of the msi project).

Does anyone have any idea what causes these errors and why the system doesn't automatically restart although the Application Event Log reports this was initiated?Looks like maybe some file was locked and the system should have been automatically restarted in order to allow a normal install to take place, but it didn't get restarted, so when the application was reinstalled, it didn't have all its files in place?

Thanks for any help on this.

Stefan Krueger

Stefan Krueger

    InstallSite.org

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Posted 15 July 2004 - 08:42

I believe that your InstallScript project doesn't allow the system to restart. In general it's not a good idea to interrupt a InstallScript setup (or any setup) in such a hard way. If you want to allow the reboot, exit your InstallScript.
A better way would be to suppress the reboot of the child install, and reboot at the end of your InstalLScript project instead.