5 replies to this topic

[gingerbull]

One of my projects (Standard project, made with InstallShield 7.03) has begun to exibhit a fatal error I have never seen before. This sometimes happens on installing on the target machine, but more often on uninstall. The installation or uninstallation then aborts, and no roll-back occurs. It does not happen on every machine, but on an unacceptable number, certainly more than half. Once the error has occurred it is not possible to install or uninstall this product - the same fatal error occurs everytime. The product is left partially installed, and I can go neither forward nor back.

The error message has the title of "Feature transfer error", and the text "Error: -995  The I/O operation has aborted because of either a thread exit or an application request."

There are other possibly related symptoms. On two of my test machines I have Ghost images of standard Windows 2000 Workstation SP2 installations, including Oracle 8.1.7 client and Office 2000. Once the error described above has happened I have to reload the Ghost image in order to try the installation again. On trying to reload the Ghost image an error is reported in Ghost that is not reported if I load the same image on the same machine without having run the offending InstallSheild package. The Ghost error message text is "NTFS error: NTFS logfile has not been flushed. Restart NT then try again." Ghost then gives the option of treating the partition as a raw partition and continuing. Choosing this option loads the image with no problems, and all is well unless I try to install the offending InstallSheild package again. Another symptom that I have noticed is related, although it seems very obscure, is that running Microsoft's RegClean utility after the system has been damaged by the failed install/uninstall behaves differently than if I have not run the failing package. Normally I would run RegClean two or three times until it reports tha no further orphaned registry entries have been found. After the failure of this package RegClean never reports that no further orphaned registry entries have been found no matter how many times I run it. Despite this, the 'undo' files created by RegClean are empty (other than the header and footer) after a couple of times of running RegClean. This seems like an unrelated thing, but experimentation has shown that the strange RegClean behavior occurs every time the error described above happens with the InstallSheild package, and at no other time, so the correlation between the two is 100% consistent.

I can find absolutely no information available by searching on the error number or message described. This is a serious issue for us, as it virtually guarantees that using this InstallSheild package will cause our client's machines to become unstable, and prevent us from being able to ever upgrade our product on machines on which the error occurs. I would be extremely grateful if anybody can throw some light on this strange situation.

[luke_s]

You should try to run in verbose log mode. This might help you help you find your problem.

[hambone]

i agree, if you could post the log file this might help.  to generate a verbose log file edit the installation string to include the /l*v logfilename.log.  you can then use one of the log analyzers to check the log.

please be aware that RegClean ( if it is v4.1a from ms ) causes a few problems as well as fixes them and is not recommended by ms for their new platforms and suites ( office xp office 2000 ).  it has also been known to cause problems with other apps.  i still like it and continue to use it but i closely monitor the items it thinks to be in error.

was the package you are trying to install created from a captured installation, a vendor provided msi, or a custom written app ?

[gingerbull]

Thanks for the suggestions, I will try the log file when I am back in the office (not until Aug 5th). Could you recommend a good log analyser?

The package in question is one created from scratch by me to install our bespoke software. IS Developer 7.03, BTW.

[hambone]

one of the beeter log analyzers is the WILogUtl.EXE from MS...

[hambone]

one of the better log analyzers is the WILogUtl.EXE from MS...