Sporadic \"Cannot open .dfm\" errors

[jsmith]

We have been getting sporadic reports from QA that the single exe installer is failing to launch. Here is one such description:

During an upgrade from a recent nightly build to today's, I immediately get an error during the process before any dialogs occur. The error is 'Runtime error in install:
Cannot open file "C:\\DOCUME~\\..\\LOCALS~1\\Temp\\mia\\prereq.dfm". The system cannot find the file specified'

Before the runtime error I first saw a dialog box stating this: 'The process cannot access the file because another process has locked a portion of the file.'

It was after running the installer the 2nd time that the runtime error popup occurred.

The same build of the installer succeeds on many other machines, and even completes successfully on the same machine when tried again a bit later. We never saw anything like this with IA8; the issue only appeared after upgrading to IA9. It's been seen in both IA9.01 and IA9.06. Any idea what might cause this or suggestions on how to prevent it?

[MichaelNesmith]

I don't think InstallAware 9 is your problem. I'd check to see why the file in the folder is locked. Anti-virus or other software such as indexers?

[jsmith]

Thanks, Michael. I've posed this same question to QA on our internal bug report. They responded that Symantec AV is installed but not enabled.

[jsmith]

QA has reported that Google Desktop is installed on a computer where this issue occurs. Is it known that installations could fail if indexing software such as this is running?

[MichaelNesmith]

It might be Symantec - anti viruses have file system drivers which are loaded and functional, even if not enabled, and still intercepting file system calls in pass-through mode. A bug in Symantec's file system driver could be causing this error, the only way to be certain is to completely remove it.

Google's indexer might also be an issue, but I find that less likely.

[Chris Miller]

QA has reported that Google Desktop is installed on a computer where this issue occurs. Is it known that installations could fail if indexing software such as this is running?

I've seen that happen with Microsoft's indexing service. It's possible that Google's service could trying to trying access the file at the same as the installer. It seems odd that Google would be indexing that folder, it should know enough to leave a folder designed for temporary files alone,

If your QA people can repeat the problem more or less reliably, have them run Microsoft's Process Monitor while the installer is running. If the problem is still occurring, the Process Monitor log should be able to identify who was trying to access prereq.dfm.

[jsmith]

Thanks for the reply, Chris. It's not exactly reliable, but it does usually happen on the same computer. I think I'm going to suggest that they run procmon every time they upgrade our software on this system...

[SYNpas]

My system:

WinXP-SP2
McAfee (real time file scan = deactivated)

InstallAware 7

Always this message:

"
Runtime error in install:
Cannot open file "C:\\doc...\\user\\local...\\Temp\\mia\\prereq.dfm
"

The mentioned temp directory does NOT contain the file "prereq.dfm".
Only the following files can be found:

icon.ico
mMSIExec.dll
ApplicationName.msi

What can I do ?

Thank you all,
Frank

[Chris Miller]

I would run the Sysinternals Process Monitor (procmon.exe), a free download from Microsoft. That will show you which process are accessing the files in question.

It could be an antivirus app, a indexing utility, or something in your own script. I had some code that did some housekeeping in one of my scripts and it was too aggressive and would delete the temp installer files before they could be used.