Installer hangs after Apply Install

[andrejzr]

Hello,

One of our customers experienced a problem during installation. It looks like the installer hangs when ApplyInstall is called - in other words, when Windows Installer starts its work. The progress text shows "Windows Installer" and then everything stops.

When executing the install (WEB Compressed install) with log, it generates just the following lines:

<InstallAware>
<SetupSplash>
<StubSize>
</StubSize>
<StubData>
</StubData>
<GlobalLists>
</GlobalLists>
<SupportDir>
</SupportDir>
<ExtractArchive>
</ExtractArchive>
<ExtractResource>
</ExtractResource>
<ResourcePath>
</ResourcePath>
<Dialogs>
</Dialogs>
</SetupSplash>
<RunScript>
<Variables>
</Variables>
<CompileScript>
</CompileScript>
<BootStrap>
</BootStrap>
<myah>


Do you have any ideas, what could be the reason for this problem? Maybe it is a problem of a PC and Windows Installer, but still - other programs get installed correctly.

Thanks
Andrej

[tj]

I'm seeing something similar when I call Apply Uninstall but it happens on all computers. Did you ever identify the issue with this? It's like the Windows Installer is busy doing something and never comes back.

[MichaelNesmith]

See my other reply on this. We might need some help trying to reproduce this if its not a mutex issue (when CPU is 100% (or a single core is 100%), this is unlikely).

[ElenaN]

It seems I faced same issue.
I use InstallAware 9 (R2 SP3 070910).
My product was successfully installed; repair and modify was run a few times with no problem.
And then suddenly it happened - on attempt to uninstall, repair or modify installer hangs showing “Windows installer” in progress text.
From log files and system state I can say that all actions before Apply uninstall (in case of remove) or Apply install (in case of repair/modify) were completed. But Apply uninstall itself was not started - installer hanged.
Cancel button do not close the hanging window. The only way to stop the installation is to kill it from Task Manager.
Msiexe.exe isn’t among running processes (at all, not only for current user).
Total CPU usage is fluctuating from 4 to 20%.
Issue is not stable reproducible - it’s difficult to reproduce it for the first time. However if it happened once it will appear again and again on each attempt to uninstall, repair or modify even after reboot.

Empirically I figured out that issue is gone if I manually remove my_product.par from install cache directory (ProgramData\<revision_code>). So I have a question: what for .par file is used? Is it safe to remove it before each install “just in case”?

[mills]

I'll research this tomorrow and get back to you on this. I might need some help trying to find a way to reproduce this. I'll let you know what I find.

[mills]

Here's a couple of description of PAR files:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parchive
http://www.techsono.com/faq/par.html

I'm not able to reproducer this. Since it sounds like you can, it be good to know the difference between the par file before and after the issue presents itself.

[ElenaN]

First of all – thank you, I really appreciate that you answered.
But I was interested in InstallAware-specific details.

ProgramData\<revision_code>\my_product.par is created by Installaware. It contains something like:

Code: Select all

A7BBDF594
FALSE
ADCB58542
FALSE
A7C84C9EC
FALSE
AAE45CFBC
FALSE

…. similar bla bla which looks like variable/value list

PCB72DF86_3
7.3.4
A5D2909D1
TRUE
P5D2909D1_3
English
MSINTEMP
C:\Users\test\AppData\Local\Temp

After fresh install my_product.par is 12KB, it grows in size after each repair/modify. Faulty and good .par files differ too significantly, so I don’t know what to say.

The answer I would like to get from IA support is something like: “InstallAware uses .par for… You can delete it, but be aware of next consequences…” (-:

[mills]

Are you using IA 9?

I created a new project to test this with in IA 10 and I'm noticing the .par file is blank. I built the same setup in IA 9 and noticed the .par file had contents after install.

I'd encourage you to try your setup in IA 10 to see what that par looks like (if you haven't already) and if it's blank in 10 and you're sticking with 9, then I think you'll be able to get away with deleting the file (or replacing it with a blank one) at the start of each maintenance...

[Tiago]

I'm having the same problem with "Apply Uninstall".

I have tried to log what Windows Installer is doing, and I've got exactly the same log file that andrejzr posted above, ending with the <myah> tag.
I'm using IA 9 (Build Moya.sp1.070409), but I don't have any PAR file under my AppData folder structure.
I have two projects and one of them works perfectly... could this be an IA bug?

Thanks in advance!

[ElenaN]

I don't have any PAR file under my AppData folder structure.

You should search for par file under CommonAppData (not user AppData)

<CommonAppData>\<revision_code (GUID, packege code of your msi)>\<product_name>.par.

By the way,the folder with par file is hiden.

I added removal of par file at the very end of my installation (on finish dialog) and haven’t seen any problems after that (at least yet).

[Tiago]

Hey, ElenaN! Thanks for the reply!

I have actually solved my problem by using Install/Remove MSI Package instead of Apply Uninstall.
I'm still not sure about any hidden setbacks, though... just in case, your suggestion might be very useful if things go awry.

Thank you very much!