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ahoria
Level 3

Installer locks until other app is closed

Hi All,

It happens that the installer/uninstaller halts at 100% and will not advance until I close Yahoo Messenger, but not always. This may be coincidental and there could be other apps that might cause the installer to lock.

When the installer hangs, the last entry in the log is: "Hello, I'm your 32bit Impersonated custom action server.". After closing Yahoo Messenger, the installer proceeds normally.

For my Basic MSI installer, I have set a CA to be executed as 'Deferred Execution in System Context', although I've tested other options as well, both 'Synchronous' and 'Asynchronous'. The CA is in a DLL file. It is calling the CopyFile platform function, which, regardless of the outcome, should not cause a complete halt of the installer and I don't see how this is related to the Yahoo Messenger app.

Can anyone help?


Regards / Horia
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(4) Replies
joshstechnij
Level 10 Flexeran
Level 10 Flexeran

If you are using an MSI DLL custom action, you may want to try debugging the DLL code. The following MSDN article provides more information on getting Windows Installer to break just before your DLL entry point is called:
Debugging Custom Actions

Analyzing the call stack with a debugger could provide some additional information as to what may be causing the hang.
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ahoria
Level 3

Thanks for this. Gave it a shot and didn't get anywhere.

Doesn't seem though that the installer should stall and wait after an arbitrary third party app to close.

Any other suggestions would be appreciated!


Regards / Horia
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ahoria
Level 3

any advice on this one?
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joshstechnij
Level 10 Flexeran
Level 10 Flexeran

If the first line of code in your custom action DLL is not running until the other program is closed, this would imply that code in the Windows Installer service is running or waiting on something. Unfortunately, we do not own nor have access to this code since it is a part of Windows. You may wish to contact Microsoft if using a debugger set up with Windows symbols fails to provide any indication of what the custom action sandbox process is waiting on. If the code in your DLL is running, and that is where the hang is occurring, debugging or isolating the issue in the DLL code would be the only way to determine what is happening (WaitForSingleObject, MsgWaitForMultipleObjects, or other blocking calls should be suspected first).

Note you can also verify the custom action information (and anything else in the MSI) is populated correctly by running full MSI validation against your built MSI package. This will at least ensure the data provided to Windows Installer is correct and not somehow causing an issue.
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