'Create MSIHande' slowing down installer

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pro510
Posts: 19
Joined: Tue Oct 07, 2014 10:41 am

'Create MSIHande' slowing down installer

Postby pro510 » Tue Aug 01, 2017 12:35 pm

We have an issue where at some point our installer when performing a silent install on Windows 7 professional is going extremely slow. I have two logs, one from a previous installer which runs fine, and one from the latest which runs slow. In the log which runs slow, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of entries which look like:

MSI (c) (7C:2C) [17:22:02:313]: Closing MSIHANDLE (2900) of type 790531 for thread 4908
MSI (c) (7C:2C) [17:22:02:363]: Creating MSIHANDLE (2901) of type 790531 for thread 4908
MSI (c) (7C:2C) [17:22:02:413]: Closing MSIHANDLE (2901) of type 790531 for thread 4908
MSI (c) (7C:2C) [17:22:02:463]: Creating MSIHANDLE (2902) of type 790531 for thread 4908
MSI (c) (7C:2C) [17:22:02:513]: Closing MSIHANDLE (2902) of type 790531 for thread 4908
MSI (c) (7C:2C) [17:22:02:563]: Creating MSIHANDLE (2903) of type 790531 for thread 4908
MSI (c) (7C:2C) [17:22:02:613]: Closing MSIHANDLE (2903) of type 790531 for thread 4908

The log file is littered with them. When the installer runs normally and log does not show these messages it takes around 2 minutes for the installer to run. Now it is taking over 30 minutes.

I have not dug into this extensively at the moment, but was reaching out now to see if this is something which is a known issue or have any idea what to look for. Googling does not show up anything useful. I have attached the log files which show the normal/good install and the slow/bad install we are getting now.

Thanks
Attachments
Logs.zip
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FrancescoT
Site Admin
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Re: 'Create MSIHande' slowing down installer

Postby FrancescoT » Tue Aug 01, 2017 1:21 pm

Dear Pro510,

you missed to specify an important point.

- Are these logs generated from the same identical machine?

Anyway for what I see, it seems that the "Windows Installer Engine Thread" has problems to create its internal MSI HANDLEs and it takes time with repeatedly trying to create it. In fact, if you look at the index reported with each "Creating MSIHANDLE" entry, you will see that the last one shows a very very high value.

> Creating MSIHANDLE ->(18171)<-

This means that the "Engine Thread" tried thousands times with the same operation.

Honestly, this is the very first time that I see a similar log.

Regards
Francesco Toscano
InstallAware Software

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pro510
Posts: 19
Joined: Tue Oct 07, 2014 10:41 am

Re: 'Create MSIHande' slowing down installer

Postby pro510 » Tue Aug 01, 2017 2:10 pm

Yes the log files are on the same identical machine.

Some more information. I had been using X6. Went back to X5 and using the exact same project built the installer and the issue does not happen. I am going to do some more testing just to verify this, but it looks like it could be something introduced in X6.

FrancescoT
Site Admin
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Joined: Sun Aug 22, 2010 4:28 am

Re: 'Create MSIHande' slowing down installer

Postby FrancescoT » Wed Aug 02, 2017 10:13 am

Dear Pro510,

Honestly, I don't believe that this has something to do with IA X6. It looks like a system issue, instead ...or a behavior that may be caused by another running process.

You may try to see if the same behavior is replicable on a clean machine, where exclusively the OS is installed (without any other software).

Regards
Francesco Toscano
InstallAware Software

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pro510
Posts: 19
Joined: Tue Oct 07, 2014 10:41 am

Re: 'Create MSIHande' slowing down installer

Postby pro510 » Thu Aug 03, 2017 1:25 pm

Hi Francesco,

I have gone back and forth several times between X5 and X6 and it is 100% reproducible. X5 is fine, X6 produces the issue. The InstallAware project file does not change, and it's the exact same machine and process which executes the installer.

Something which may be relevant. The machine which executes the installer is Windows 7 Pro, and the installer is executed by a process running on the SYSTEM account. There would not normally be anyone logged in, though having someone logged in has no effect on the outcome (same issue can be seen when running installer created by X6).

We have reverted back to X5 for now to solve our customer issues. If I get time I will see if I can reproduce the issue with a new basic project.

FrancescoT
Site Admin
Posts: 5360
Joined: Sun Aug 22, 2010 4:28 am

Re: 'Create MSIHande' slowing down installer

Postby FrancescoT » Fri Aug 04, 2017 6:00 am

Dear Pro510,

I managed to "partially" replicate this behavior, with comparing two msi packages generated using X5 and X6.

I said "partially", because I can confirm that the X6 MSI generated installer takes a bit more time to complete the setup process, if compared to the same MSI package generated using X5 and I also found an increase of the "Creating MSIHANDLE" entries in the X6 installer LOG.

However, I haven't found that the X6 MSI generated installer takes so much time to complete the process or that this goes extremely slow. In my case, if the X5 package completed in about 1 minute and 30 secs, the X6 package required 1 minute and 37 secs. I haven't found significant differences when installing under a standard user or SYSTEM user.

The only difference on the MSI side that exists between X5 and X6, it's the introduction of the RESTART MANAGER in IA X6.

"the Restart Manager available with Windows Vista and newer operating systems to perform an orderly shutdown and restart of applications during an installation. This enables safe updates to the file resources being consumed by those applications.When using the Windows Installer engine, the Restart Manager is invoked automatically by Windows Installer and this cannot be disabled."
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa373524(v=vs.85).aspx

In conclusion, it may be possible that particular machine of your user, It has many concurrent running process while your setup gets executed. Very probably, some of them can interfere with the setup process and these may be involved with multiple tries of the RESTART MANAGER.

To verify the issue, you should also try to replicate the problem using a CLEAN MACHINE where exclusively the OS is installed (without any other software).

Last but not least, please consider that one of the most important MSI recommendation, it's to shut down any running application and any running background process, that may interfere with the installation, prior to launch a setup process.

Hope this helps you.

Regards
Francesco Toscano
InstallAware Software

White Papers (HowTos) - http://www.installaware.com/publication ... papers.htm
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FrancescoT
Site Admin
Posts: 5360
Joined: Sun Aug 22, 2010 4:28 am

Re: 'Create MSIHande' slowing down installer

Postby FrancescoT » Fri Aug 04, 2017 8:47 am

Dear Pro510,

I have done some other verifications. You may try if "MYAH_DISABLE_VISTA_RESTART_MANAGER" pre-defined variable has any effect with your issue. You should try with setting it as TRUE at the very beginning of your script code.

Let me know.

At any rate, I have also reported what we discussed to our dev team ...maybe they will be able to tell me something more about the matter.

Regards
Francesco Toscano
InstallAware Software

White Papers (HowTos) - http://www.installaware.com/publication ... papers.htm
Publications - http://www.installaware.com/publications-review.htm
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FrancescoT
Site Admin
Posts: 5360
Joined: Sun Aug 22, 2010 4:28 am

Re: 'Create MSIHande' slowing down installer

Postby FrancescoT » Mon Aug 07, 2017 10:22 am

Dear Pro510,

the latest IA X6 Creators Update (23.11) should fix the issue you reported.

You also have to disable the RESTART MANAGER using the "MYAH_DISABLE_VISTA_RESTART_MANAGER" pre-defined variable, as I suggested with my previous reply.

PLEASE NOTE!
This update requires a new re-generated license file to activate the product.

Hope this helps you.

Regards
Francesco Toscano
InstallAware Software

White Papers (HowTos) - http://www.installaware.com/publication ... papers.htm
Publications - http://www.installaware.com/publications-review.htm
InstallAware Help -F1 anywhere in the InstallAware IDE

pro510
Posts: 19
Joined: Tue Oct 07, 2014 10:41 am

Re: 'Create MSIHande' slowing down installer

Postby pro510 » Mon Oct 23, 2017 11:49 am

Hi Francesco,

Sorry it's been a while but I did get round to trying the latest InstallAware and setting MYAH_DISABLE_VISTA_RESTART_MANAGER and so far this looks like it has fixed the issue for me. We will do more testing over the coming days and weeks and report back if we still have issues.

Thanks


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