6 replies to this topic

[Olle]

It seems like for a minority of our Vista users our msi:s fail to
write to LOCAL_MACHINE in such a way that the users won't
realize that the installer has, in fact, failed. The actuall content, some
15000 files adding up to about 1GB, is poperly installed, though.
This content is used by a plug-in, that is also installed by the msi
but to some totally different location. The registry entry written(not written)
to LOCAL_MACHINE is there to tell the plug-in where the content has
actually been installed.

I don't really know whether the users with problems are running as
admin or not or have UAC enabled. Without actually knowing the
numbers I guess it might be about 1% of the users, or lower, that have this problem.

/Olof W

[Stefan Krueger]

If you can generate a log of the install ( http://www.msifaq.com/a/1022.htm ) it might tell you why these entries aren't created.

[Olle]

Mmm, yes the logfile. But I cannot reproduce the failure myself.
Maybe our support guy can get one of our troubled users to
produce and send in a logfile.

I take it there is no standard Vista culprit that behaves in this way?
We have tens of thousands of happy XP users that have used the
same installer.

/Olof W

[Stefan Krueger]

UAC is a typical suspect on Vista. But typically this should fail the complete install if it doesn't have permissions to write to HKLM. Or are you writing these registry entries in a custom action?

[Olle]

No, the registry writing is done as part of component install using
the registry table in the usual way.

I have been thinking more along the lines that it could have something
to do with the access rights raising pop-up going away after a couple
of minutes. Since our installs contain a large number of files and directories
it takes a very long time to uninstall them, up to 15 minutes, and patching
is also slow. First installs, however, are usually not that terribly slow
and the risks that the user wanders off for a cup of coffey shouldn't
that high.

/Olof W

Edited by Olle, 05 May 2008 - 20:09.

[Stefan Krueger]

You should be able to see this in the log ("UAC cancelled by user") if UAC runs into the timeout.

[masterjonte]

You can download and use ProcessMonitor to scan if you want to se what files msiexec is manipulation at the time... I had a problem with a windows MSDN help update that took 5 minutes to complete. It was a merge module from Microsoft that was the problem not my installation...I hope it will get you a bit on the way.