Random ntdll.dll crashes in installations created with InstallShield 2014

[IlkkaV]

We migrated from InstallShield 2013 to InstallShield 2014 and while everything went seemingly smooth, we're now having issues in our automated tests with approximately 10% of the installations failing with APPCRASH event on ntdll.dll. Even though we log our installations, the log isn't generated in these cases. Is this a known issue and what could be done to improve the reliability? No other changes that the InstallShield version upgrade has taken place in the environment lately.

[IlkkaV]

We got some more log data now. No exceptions in the log, the installer simply crashed when starting to display the dialogs

[CODE]
MSI (c) (44:74) [00:18:25:131]: Skipping action: PatchWelcome (condition is false)
MSI (c) (44:74) [00:18:25:131]: Skipping action: InstallWelcome (condition is false)
MSI (c) (44:74) [00:18:25:131]: Skipping action: SetupResume (condition is false)
MSI (c) (44:74) [00:18:25:131]: Doing action: MaintenanceWelcome
Action start 0:18:25: MaintenanceWelcome.
[/CODE]

[MichaelU]

That seems rather unusual; at the point of showing MaintenanceWelcome there shouldn't even be any custom actions in flight, so it should be entirely Windows Installer and Windows. Is there anything else you know about the situations that do and do not crash? For example differences in versions of Windows, anti-virus or other low level software, hardware could all potentially impact this; however I can't say that any of them seem a particularly likely culprit to me yet.

[IlkkaV]

Now the issue seems to occur typically when the installation gets to the point where it checks feature prerequisites:

InstallShield 8:02:39: Created Window {19179CCB-C608-4B3A-A050-51090114CDA4} for communication with prerequisites

On our test computers the prerequisites are typically already installed so there's not much to do here, but occasional runs fail across various test computers. For example, during last night's test run one computer had 43 successful cases with 4 crashes while another had 46 successes and 1 crash. Two other computers didn't have the crashes this time, but all of them have had their share of the ntdll.dll crashes after we migrated to InstallShield 2014. With installations built in InstallShield 2013 the same computers didn't have this issue (or at least any ntdll.dll crashes were so infrequent that they went unnoticed). However, after the InstallShield 2014 migration it's rare to see all installation tests on green while previously having a test fail was a sure sign that there's something wrong with the installer itself. So unless something broke 4 different test machines (they don't even share the same virtual host) right when we switched from InstallShield 2013 to InstallShield 2014, it looks like there's something a little bit off in InstallShield 2014's prerequisite handling.

[abaranowski]

I have a clinet that installed the my software on 6 xenapp server and 2 of failed with the same error:

Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: ClientSetup-1.2.319.exe
Application Version: 1.2.319.0
Application Timestamp: 53723dd9
Fault Module Name: ntdll.dll
Fault Module Version: 6.1.7601.22436
Fault Module Timestamp: 521eaa80
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 00033516
OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.18.10
Locale ID: 1033
Additional Information 1: 0a9e
Additional Information 2: 0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789
Additional Information 3: 0a9e
Additional Information 4: 0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789

Does any have any fix for this ?

[MichaelU]

Have either of you tried InstallShield 2014 SP1 in your scenarios? We did fix at least one rare setup.exe crash that manifested in ntdll.dll in the service pack, so it's possible that rebuilding with it will resolve the error.

[IlkkaV]

MichaelU wrote:
Have either of you tried InstallShield 2014 SP1 in your scenarios? We did fix at least one rare setup.exe crash that manifested in ntdll.dll in the service pack, so it's possible that rebuilding with it will resolve the error.

I upgraded to 2014 SP1 today. Now I just need to gather some data from a few days' worth of test runs.

[DavidPainter]

Has anyone seen any further developments on this?
We have been seeing similar issues to IlkkaV (ntdll.dll APPCRASH at the ISInstallPrerequisites action), but only ever on one machine:

[CODE]Action start 14:18:31: ISInstallPrerequisites.
MSI (c) (18:E0) [14:18:31:744]: Invoking remote custom action. DLL: C:\Users\zonal\AppData\Local\Temp\MSI6384.tmp, Entrypoint: InstallPrerequisites
InstallShield 14:18:31: Features with associated prerequisites are being installed or advertised. Finding setup.exe...
InstallShield 14:18:31: Looking for setup launcher in 'C:' with name 'MyProduct.exe'...
InstallShield 14:18:31: Checking for correct setup launcher 'C:\MyProduct.exe'...
InstallShield 14:18:31: Checking embedded setup.ini
...
InstallShield 14:18:31: Created Window {65CD9D99-8673-4D71-8506-A8D5F7130F2F} for communication with prerequisites
InstallShield 14:18:31: *** Launching prerequisites (): C:\MyProduct.exe /embed"{65CD9D99-8673-4D71-8506-A8D5F7130F2F}" /hide_splash /hide_progress /runprerequisites"Feature1,Feature2" /l1033
InstallShield 14:22:58: *** Prerequisites complete; return code -1073741819
InstallShield 14:22:58: Destroyed Window {65CD9D99-8673-4D71-8506-A8D5F7130F2F}
CustomAction ISInstallPrerequisites returned actual error code 1603 (note this may not be 100% accurate if translation happened inside sandbox)
Action ended 14:22:58: ISInstallPrerequisites. Return value 3.
[/CODE]

Usually a reboot fixes the issue on this machine...

Did applying SP1 help at all?

thanks