ISSetupFiles not getting extracted to SUPPORTDIR on one particular customer's machine

[schikura]

Problem:
ISSetupFiles not getting extracted to SUPPORTDIR on one particular customer's machine

I saw this problem with the original product installer of our product created using Installshield. To confirm,
a) i created a simple Basic MSI project in Installshield 2008
b) Added a test.txt file to the SUPPORTFILES(Language independent)
c) Built as a single MSI image release.

Verified locally on couple of test machines, that the test.txt was properly getting extracted to the SUPPORTDIR under %TEMP%. Also confirmed the same through the log messages:

MSI (c) (64:0C) [13:22:09:119]: Doing action: ISSetupFilesExtract
Action 13:22:09: ISSetupFilesExtract.
Action start 13:22:09: ISSetupFilesExtract.
MSI (c) (64:B0) [13:22:09:166]: Invoking remote custom action. DLL: C:\DOCUME~1\chikuram\LOCALS~1\Temp\MSI358.tmp, Entrypoint: SFStartupEx
MSI (c) (64:40) [13:22:09:182]: Cloaking enabled.
MSI (c) (64:40) [13:22:09:182]: Attempting to enable all disabled priveleges before calling Install on Server
MSI (c) (64:40) [13:22:09:182]: Connected to service for CA interface.
1: Starting to extract setup files
1: Getting SUPPORTDIR property :
1: Extracting SetupFiles to: C:\DOCUME~1\chikuram\LOCALS~1\Temp\{A9DE6E8A-0756-4DDB-83D4-0D4D3C3AD320}
1: Getting ISSetupFile table view
1: Executing ISSetupFile table view
1: Extracting Setup File:
1: C:\DOCUME~1\chikuram\LOCALS~1\Temp\{A9DE6E8A-0756-4DDB-83D4-0D4D3C3AD320}\test.txt
1: Setting SUPPORTDIR property to: C:\DOCUME~1\chikuram\LOCALS~1\Temp\{A9DE6E8A-0756-4DDB-83D4-0D4D3C3AD320}
MSI (c) (64!24) [13:22:09:275]: PROPERTY CHANGE: Adding SUPPORTDIR property. Its value is 'C:\DOCUME~1\chikuram\LOCALS~1\Temp\{A9DE6E8A-0756-4DDB-83D4-0D4D3C3AD320}'.
MSI (c) (64!24) [13:22:09:275]: PROPERTY CHANGE: Adding ISSETUPFILESCOMPLETED property. Its value is 'Completed'.
1: Setting ISSETUPFILESCOMPLETED property
Action ended 13:22:09: ISSetupFilesExtract. Return value 1.
MSI (c) (64:0C) [13:22:09:275]: Doing action: AppSearch

I sent the same MSI to the customer and tried installation through verbose logging(l*v), The file was not getting extracted to the SUPPORTDIR folder. And following is what I see in the log file:

MSI (c) (64:0C) [13:22:09:119]: Doing action: ISSetupFilesExtract
Action 13:22:09: ISSetupFilesExtract.
Action start 13:22:09: ISSetupFilesExtract.
MSI (c) (64:B0) [13:22:09:166]: Invoking remote custom action. DLL: C:\DOCUME~1\chikuram\LOCALS~1\Temp\MSI358.tmp, Entrypoint: SFStartupEx
MSI (c) (64:40) [13:22:09:182]: Cloaking enabled.
MSI (c) (64:40) [13:22:09:182]: Attempting to enable all disabled priveleges before calling Install on Server
MSI (c) (64:40) [13:22:09:182]: Connected to service for CA interface.
Action ended 13:22:09: ISSetupFilesExtract. Return value 1.
MSI (c) (64:0C) [13:22:09:275]: Doing action: AppSearch

As you can see, there is no extraction part nor any errors in the log file 😞

Except for this, the rest of the installation has no issues with the sample installer. i.e., the Welcome dialog comes properly.

I am not able to see what could be the problem?
I will attach the verbose log file once I get it from the customer machine.

Following is what I have tried till now with no luck:
1) Verified dcomcnfg permissions for My Computer.
2) Verified the user account using which installation is being tried is part of Administrators group.
3) Changed TEMP and TMP to some other directory(C:\temp) and tried the installation.
4) Disabled McAfee "Access Protection" and tried the installation again.
5) Ran procmon.exe in the background, but couldn't find any messages which may be cause of the problem:
a) I see that MSI12.tmp DLL gets created and used multiple times.
b) But, never anything about the test.txt of the SUPPORTDIR folder itself.

PLEASE HELP ME IN THIS REGARD :confused:

THANKS IN ADVANCE.

Thanks and Regards,
Santhosh Chikurambotla

[MichaelU]

One early thing to check is for any overly sensitive antivirus software that may prevent custom actions from running. You could ask your customer to disable their antivirus program and try again.

[schikura]

Hi Michael,

Thank you very much for the reply.

As i had updated in the initial information, I had disabled McAfee's "Access Protection" feature completely and tried. Still the same problem is happening.

Do you think, I should ask the customer to completely disable McAfee and try the installation once?

Thanks and Regards,
Santhosh

[schikura]

Hi,

As the customer was having only one machine where the above strange problem was happening, this is what I had experimented which had solved the problem:

The whole issue was that the SUPPORTDIR files were not getting extracted and the installation was hanging at the point, where it needs those files.

Solution:
1) Took all the files we bundled under SUPPORTDIR to the customer machine.
2) Written the following batch file which does following:
a) It continuosly loops and checks till _isres.dll is available in any dir under %temp%.
b) Once it is available, it immediately stores the directory name and copies all the already available SUPPORTDIR files to that directory.
c) The setup.exe when ever it needed was happily using those files as they were available and the installation went through.

Note: Initially tried to manually copy the files, but the installation was reaching the problematic point, b4 the copy itself(lost the race with it 😞 ]. Hence came up with below simple batch script to defeat it 🙂

@setlocal
set PWD=%CD%

start setup_32.exe /verbose"C:\verbose-50.txt" /z" -l"

cd %temp%

:search_file
dir /s /b _isres.dll | find "isres" >test_out
set /p test_file= < test_out

if "%test_file%"=="" (goto :search_file)

set test_path=%test_file:~0,-10%

copy "%PWD%\" "%test_path%"

cd %PWD%

The Installshield support guys response rate is so great that the packaging engineers will be able to learn a lot of things as they never get the help. 😄

Updating it here, just in case someone else faces same issue and need not waste days together for this.

-Santhosh Chikurambotla

[Saragani]

I've posted in InstallShield 2012 forum few hours ago, but the thread still not approved (I cannot see it).

The problem is that no files are extracted:

Action 12:40:06: ISSetupFilesExtract.
Action start 12:40:07: ISSetupFilesExtract.
Action ended 12:40:08: ISSetupFilesExtract. Return value 1.

ISSetupFilesExtract is being called, but nothing gets extracted. Already 4 computers suffers from this problem, and I have no clue why.


Can anyone help?

Thanks