I am working on a Basic MSI project. I added a custom action to uninstall SQL Server 2005 Express during uninstallation. I tried to use the UninstallApplication method to uninstall SQL Server 2005 Express and LaunchAppAndWait method to execute the uninstall string for SQL Server 2005 Express. In both ways I used LAAW_OPTION_WAIT as a parameter. And in both ways I got the same error message during the uninstallation of SQL Server 2005 Express:
"failed to grab the execution mutex; system error 258".
Is there anyone can tell me how I can solve this problem?
Did you look at the Uninstall Registry Entry for Uninstalling SQL Server 2005 Express to make sure you are using the correct command line arguments? If they don't match, it might give you a clue as to what might be happening.
To uninstall i think you will have to do it MSI per MSI, the sqlexpress wrapper contains 5 MSI's (depends on the options choosen on install).
If you do it manually (add/remove programs), you will see a message that certain services have to be stopped first, and then a message that the server has dependencies that need to be uninstalled first.
So my advice is do it manually on a test machine, see in what order the different MSI's need to be uninstalled and then add the steps in your uninstall sequence.
