InstallAware

I have been using IA 6.0 for a year or so. Everything was working great. I upgraded to a new development PC. I downloaded the current version of IA, 6.6 and installed it on my new dev PC. I re-generated my license file and installed it, and everything is working great.

The problem is that the most recent install package I created fails on some of our PCs.
It fails complaining that:
"The feature you are trying to use is on a network resource that is unavailable." "Click OK to try again, or enter an alternate path to a folder containing the intallation package 'lwsetup.msi'.
If you cancel, it reports:
Error
"An installation package for the product cannot be found. Try installation again using a valid copy of the installation package 'lwsetup.msi'.

If you click ok, the installation "Finish" dialog appears and reports that setup is complete. The application is in fact installed and seems to work fine.

lwsetup.msi and lwsetup.mpr are our InstallAware files. I'm not sure why the setup program is looking for them.

If we try the install program that was generated on my old dev PC with IA 6.0, it works fine.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

File Attached:

IAerror1.JPG

I don't think this has to do with 6.6. Something you are not aware of may have changed in your project or your file paths.

If the paths are off wouldn't it fail to build the project?

I also tried Tools->Validate Database, and it is good.

Is there any way I can narrow down what may be causing the error?

I've got the same error with 6.6.
When I try to install my application I've got the same error.
This appens when progress text is set to c:\\Config.Msi\\1386.rbf
I don't know what is the role of this file, but it looks like setup uses the wrong one. Can you tell me more about this file ?

If I re-run the setup, there is no error.

I debug my script, the error occurs when Aplly Install. I'm sure all my pathes are good.

Please can you help us?

I was trying to figure this out, so I did the following: (note: don't try this at home)

1) I renamed
c:\\Program Files\\InstallAware\\InstallAware 6.6
to
c:\\Program Files\\InstallAware\\InstallAware 6.6-backup

2) I copied the InstallAware binaries from my old dev PC
c:\\Program Files\\InstallAware\\Install Aware 6
to my new PC as:
c:\\Program Files\\InstallAware\\Install Aware 6.6

Now when I run InstallAware, it comes up with the InstallAware 6.
I was then able to re-build my setup.

With this rebuilt setup, the error is fixed on both PCs that were seeing the error.

I switched back to the 6.6 binary, and re-built, and the error returned.

This still doesn't seem like an InstallAware 6.6 issue. Files like c:\\Config.Msi\\1386.rbf are used internally by Windows Installer to create backups of files it is replacing or uninstalling, to permit rollback, at install or upgrade time. If the error you are seeing points at these files, you might have a problem with how the MSI service is configured on your machine, or other issues - say access rights and so on.

The fact that the problem surfaces only with 6.6 does not really mean much, and should not comfort you that the 6.0 setup is solid. On a different system the same issue might occur, so what you should really try to do is isolate when and why this problem happens.

What you should try to do is produce a minimum setup that causes this issue, so we can conclusively determine if this is a problem with InstallAware in general, just the latest 6.6, or anything else.

One thing that comes to mind after further thought is that since InstallAware 6.5, InstallAware has been employing a workaround to make sure custom shortcut icons you pick for your shortcuts are always displayed properly (there was an issue with Windows Installer which prevented this from happening on subsequent installs after the initial one).

This is a long shot, and I don't see what else might even be remotely related to the problems you are reporting; but might be worth checking out in your projects to see if this is causing the issue.

I checked all my shortcuts. I even removed the one with a custom icon, and it didn't make any difference.
I agree there is something a little wrong with these users PC, but for whatever reason, the 6.0 build works ok, while the 6.6 doesn't. I'll keep working on it.

6.6 has a more "solid" engine compared to 6.0, meaning you should run into fewer (if any) issues. But in the real world, Murphy's Law always takes precedence, I presume...

I know another workaround in 6.5+ was to prevent Flash videos from preventing uninstallations of products on Vista. That might have impact on this issue.

Please let us know when you find out more.

Did you make any progress with this. Some of our users have reported the same error with a 6.6 build installation, i.e.

"The feature you are trying to use is on a network resource that is unavailable."

It was looking in folder: C:\\DOCUME~1\\MOTHBR~1\\LOCALS~1\\Temp\\mia132.tmp\\data\\

hmmm. I had a 6.6 update that worked absolutely fine, upgraded to 7 and now getting the error you described.

I had run into this before in a different installation in 6.6 and it was a problem editing an INI file.

Guess I'll start digging through this one.

BTW Michael: The problem I had in 6.6 with Registry entries is not fixed in 7 like anticipated. Exact same problem.

I have started getting similar errors, but only in some cases. (IA 7.0)

I have done lots of testing on VMware images and there seems to be no problems on these, but when I have installed the same application on a number of real computers, I get this type of error.

It seems to be towards the end of the installation, but I will continue to investigate at my end.

The main difference I have found is that the real pc's I have installed this application on have already had the application installed using a previous version of IA (6.3)

When I changed the product code to a new GUID, the installation worked without a problem.

Maybe it is an issue with some saved parameters from the old install

I have finally tracked it down to entries in the registry

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\\Installer\\Products\\<some guid>\\SourceList

There seems to be a number of entries in here relating to previous versions of my application,

SourceList\\LastUsedSource key contains the directories mentioned in the error messages.

Once I deleted all of the product keys mentioning my application, the installation went though without a problem.

As for how to get this fixed, someone else will have to take over.

SteveDude wrote:hmmm. I had a 6.6 update that worked absolutely fine, upgraded to 7 and now getting the error you described.

Same here. My impression is that this issue has the habit of bubbling up after a botched installation. Unfortunately this is not a rare occurrence. To fix it I have to go through the registry and delete anything related to the offending installation (a rather slow, painful process) and also clean temp files etc.

Unfortunately I cannot change the GUID as Gareth did, since all our installations are upgrades for already existing installations.

This issue is very frustrating.