Intermittant issue - Dependent installs failing

[nharding]

We are using InstallAware 6.5 for a large product installation. In testing we have found that intermittently dependent installs will fail. We have seen this with the VC 8.0 runtime and also with another install that we launch in the same way via a filebag. Most of the time, it will work fine if the install is rerun - even on a VM reverting to the same spot as before run. The error is always that some of the files in the file bag didn't get copied to the target dir properly.

This may be related to vista, but it may be that most of our clean install testing has been on vista so that is the only place we have seen it.

We are about 2 weeks before a release, so I hesitate to upgrade to 7.0 at this point, but if you were confident you have fixed this bug we would consider it.

Any ideas what this issue is and how to fix it?

[nharding]

I just got confirmation from one of our testers that we have also seen this in XP, so it is not a vista issue.

[nharding]

Can someone take a look at this one? This is a major bug!

[MichaelNesmith]

Before we can accept classification as a major bug, we'll need you to provide reproducible steps to re-create the problem reliably.

[nharding]

I wish I could reproduce it... Even running the exact same compiled install and running from the exact same snapshot in VMWare, it still will only fail approximately 1 out of 5 times. We have seen it fail on vista and XP and multiple different client machines as well as our own testing.

It has failed installing the .Net runtime, the CPP runtime and also with a different dependent install of our own. We have not been able to isolate the issue at all. It has happened with both the 32 bit and 64 bit version of our install.

4 out of 5 times (or even more) it runs perfectly. Any ideas of what to try? I am very hesitant to spend a lot of money upgrading us to InstallAware 7 until we can resolve what this issue is.