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datamine
Level 6

Bug in Windows Installer 4.5?

I've got an installer which consists of a main product, and 4 chained MSIs that (optionally) install "sub-products" that are potentially common to some of our other software products. The problem I'm having is intermittent, and peculiar to Windows Installer 4.5 under Vista Business 64 SP1. The install proceeds as I'd expect, kicking off the 4 chained MSI installations after finishing the main product installation. However, sometimes the install appears to "hang" before the final (SetupCompleteSuccess) dialog appears. The only way out of it is to kill the process through Task Manager.

Running the program just installed reveals that it has installed correctly, so I wondered if anyone else has had this problem and has found a solution to it? Also, am I right in thinking that each chained MSI kicks off a new instance of msiexec, as there appear to be multiple instances of the process running when Task Manager is invoked to kill the hung install?

TIA

Ian.
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(2) Replies
Stefan_Krueger
Level 9

Not sure if that's the problem you're running into but you may want to try this MSI 4.5 hotfix for a known issue with chained MSIs:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=958655
Stefan Krueger
InstallSite.org
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datamine
Level 6

That looks like exactly the problem we're seeing, however... there seem to be so many updates for different OSes, some of which appear to have an earlier version number than the one I already have, it's hard to know what I have to put in my installer to fix it!
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