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several instances of MSIEXEC effect performance?


4 replies to this topic

Kengelmeier

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Posted 13 January 2004 - 11:32

I have few general questions about the windows installer. I'm trying to find some information concerning an incredibally long install time. We have a package that installs several drivers and services. The installer supports 9x and NT based OSes in an emulated environment. Some of the items we install are display drivers, printer drivers, mouse drives, audio drivers, and also several services.

After the installer is opened we have several instances of msiexec.exe running, usually 4 or 5 are running under the User's account (which has administrative rights), as well as 1 running under the System account. Currently the installer takes about 18 minutes to complete. I was curious if the multiple instances could be related to the long install time?
I'm also wondering if the installer might be trying to install the device drivers simultaneously, thus explaining the multiple instances of msiexec.exe. If this is true would it maybe be better to install them one after the other?

I apologize if this is a novice question to be asking or if I left any critical details out, I do not have much experience with installers.

Any help or explanations are greatly appreciated

Thanks - Kengelmeier


Glytzhkof

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Posted 13 January 2004 - 19:04

There are always minimum 2 msiexec.exe processed running for a setup on WinNT based systems (this is the user and system context versions of the msiexec.exe).

I had the same "problem" earlier with a lot of msiexec.exe processes running, and I remember searching for info and concluding that it was normal. I think one of the things that can cause more msiexec.exe processes to show up is the use of Installscript custom actions.
Regards
-Stein Åsmul

Kengelmeier

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Posted 14 January 2004 - 03:32

Hi, thanks for the reply, I'll ask the guy responsible for the installer if the custom actions might the culprit. I'm having the same problem finding information on the cause of the multiple instances. Unfortunatley I'm not actually building the installer, but I think there are performance issues we need to work out.

I'm trying to find some way to actually help in determining what some of our problems are by doing a little bit of research into this. In the past we used a different package that would complete the install in under a minute, now we have a more powerful installer that we are unfamiliar with.

I'm thinking that our installer might be trying to install several device drivers simultaneously, thus causing the multiple instances of msiexec.exe to run at the same time (I've seen up to 7 user instances plus the System). If this is a possible cause of the poor performance I was wondering if we might be better off if we install each driver to completion before beginning to process the next?

Thanks again if anyone can offer additional insight.

Glytzhkof

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Posted 14 January 2004 - 22:46

Sorry, but I do not think that the multiple msiexec.exe instances is the real cause of the slow installation. If there are a lot of different components in the setup this could slow things down.
Regards
-Stein Åsmul

Kengelmeier

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Posted 15 January 2004 - 01:30

I guess I need to keep looking for other possibilities, one of our problems is that we are running this in an emulated environment so the times in the log file are not accurate (one of the components we are installing is time synchronization). Previously we used a different installer, which could complete all the needed actions in about 40 seconds. Because of this I don't think a 15+ minute install time is acceptable. Thanks for the advice.