2 replies to this topic

[aaronabend]

I ship MSDE with my product. I use merge modules (I know it is not recommended but the alternative is even more unreliable).

About 20% of the time, the installs are hanging on Windows XPsp2. The problem appears to be that the MDAC installation requires a reboot, but the installer looks at the reboot request and cannot figure out what to do. The logs appear to show a completed install, but the users tell me the installation was stopped when they cancelled.

Interesting note: most of the time, IF they try to reinstall, the install works fine. But 90% of the time they throw our application out and tell us to fix our installer.

Any help greatly appreciated!

Aaron

Here are 2 common endings to the install logs:

Ending 1:
TempFolder is C:\DOCUME~1\Dan\LOCALS~1\Temp\{40AB9B6D-245A-49AD-8E55-FCAE672E1E18}\
Loading extended custom action library C:\DOCUME~1\Dan\LOCALS~1\Temp\{40AB9B6D-245A-49AD-8E55-FCAE672E1E18}\sqlcax.dll
SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server Setup.{40AB9B6D-245A-49AD-8E55-FCAE672E1E18}
Starting custom action InstallSqlRedis
Executing "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\80\Tools\Binn\sqlredis.exe /q:a"
**** END OF FILE ****
[note: this installation is one one of my machines. Unlike the second ending, this one does not go away. I have not been able to install on this machine. I'd post the whole log but it's over the 100k limit]

Ending 2:
=== Logging stopped: 22.3.2005 13:47:01 ===
MSI © (C8:F0) [13:47:01:469]: Note: 1: 1728
MSI © (C8:F0) [13:47:01:469]: Product: Viapoint 1.3 -- Configuration completed successfully.

MSI © (C8:F0) [13:47:01:799]: Grabbed execution mutex.
MSI © (C8:F0) [13:47:01:799]: Cleaning up uninstalled install packages, if any exist
MSI © (C8:F0) [13:47:03:141]: MainEngineThread is returning 1641
=== Verbose logging stopped: 22.3.2005 13:47:03 ===
**** END OF FILE ****

[Zweitze]

Are you sure that the MDAC installation was executed? Note that WinXP comes with MDAC 2.7, and MSDE probably just requires MDAC 2.6.

Also: try running sqlredis on a command line, as follows:
Sqlredis /?
Usually such programs display a list of command line options. Check if it can output debug/log information, add these options to custom action InstallSqlRedis.

[aaronabend]

Zweitze,

Thanks for your reply and apologies for my belated response.

Your analysis is 100% correct. Microsoft has acknowledged that this is a bug and I am working with them to resolve it.

From what I can tell, systems without MDAC are fine, since MDAC is included with MSDE. But XP now ships with 2.7 as you point out and the Microsoft MSDE installer chokes when it comes to install its MDAC over it. Apparently it was written to assume that MDAC was not already on the machine.

I will post when I get resolution.

Thanks

Aaron