When running the installer (install script MSI) over a previous install it displays a message box with the appication's name as the title and "1:" in the box. This happens before the welcome screen comes up. If you select Ok the install aborts. In looking at the log file it has the same "1:" in it and nothing else.
This happens when you install over a previously installed version that has has had the product number changed but technically has the same version (the fourth digit is changed, but the 3 that matter haven't). If you uninstall the previous version it works correctly and if you have a version with one of the 3 digits different it works correctly.
I put debug message boxes all through my install script, but it never hits any of them.
Does anyone have a clue as to why this is happening?
An error such as this occurring this early is typically an indication that the MSI package (or transforms for multilanguage setups) or product (for maintenance) could not be opened. Unfortunately, the error message displayed is completely unrelated to what the actual error is.
It should be possible to get the MSI API error that is causing the setup to abort by enabling Windows Installer logging from the registry. With the logging policy enabled, running the setup in the scenario which causes this behavior should create a log with some information on the error (don't log the setup with /verbose).
To enable logging, create a new string value named Logging in the following key: HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Installer
The logs created with logging enabled will be in the temp folder (%temp%) and named MSI.log. In this case, there is likely only one log created (InstallScript MSI installations will usually have three logs created when logging is enabled).
This scenario (a small update, since major, minor, and build versions are the same across these products but the package code should have changed between builds) should not be causing this behavior just on changing a fourth version number field in the product version. There is likely some other error occurring while the InstallScript engine calls into the MSI APIs to open the MSI package for the launching installation.
Update: What I did to fix this problem was to change the upgrade code on the advanced tab of the upgrade item. It was all 0s. I put the correct code in and it worked correctly. I thought I read in the documentation that all 0s was supposed to be filled in with the correct one when it built, but apparently that is not the case.
The all 0's (null) GUID for an upgrade code in a major upgrade item should in fact be replaced at build time with the upgrade code from the Property table in the project being built. We've tried adding a few upgrade items in addition to the default 'prevent downgrade' upgrade item and after building and looking at the Upgrade table of the built MSI package, the UpgradeCode for each record was replaced by the project's upgrade code (InstallScript MSI project in IS 2011).
If you have a project that reproduces this behavior that you would like us to look at further to determine possible causes, please let us know.
