3 replies to this topic

[getut]

Hello,

I have a repackaged installation (The Gimp 2.4.4) that is giving me fits. It overwrites the more complex PATH environment of the machines it installs on with the PATH of the machine the MSI was created on.

I have looked at the MSI in direct edit mode, but there is nothing in the Environment Variables section of the MSI and there is also nothing that I can find in the registry section that would be changing the path.

How can I search and destroy on this behaviour?

[Stefan Krueger]

Generate a log. This might tell you which action is writing to the PATH. Then take a close look at the associated table(s).

[getut]

Thanks for the reply Stefan. This is getting even stranger.

In my vmware test environment, with logging enabled. I cannot get the msi to whack the path. It is a barebones fresh XP install and I copy the path from another machine into my test install. The end result is that the path doesn't change so nothing logged about it changing.

But when I roll out the msi via group policy a significant number of machines lose a few critical paths in the path environment variable. It doesn't appear to even be every machine that gets the whacked path, but I have more research to do to verify exactly what percentage are being affected. At first look I would say 80% but it may be 100%.

Any other ideas on what to do next?

I got the immediate emergency solved by just psexec'ing known paths out to all computers, but I'd still like to get my gimp.msi repaired for future machines that get it.

[Stefan Krueger]

If you can't reproduce the problem It's hard to diagnose. Make a VMware image that's similar to the real world machine which are experiencing the problem. Or generate the log on one of those physical machines.