CODEWITHSUNDEEP
windows-installerinstallshield
vsk
vsk

Reputation: 35

Windows installer popping up repair mechanism

I have a Windows installer package which causes Windows repair mechanism to pop up randomly. From the event viewer logs, I see the below message

Detection of product 'Product ID'. feature 'feature_name' failed during request for component 'component id'

However apart from this I don't see any other messages in the Event viewer's Application logs. According to this MSDN article https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/msi/searching-for-a-broken-feature-or-component, I see that the above message should be followed by another message given below

Detection of product 'MyProduct', feature 'MyFeature', component 'MyComponent' failed

But I don't see this message in the Event Viewer logs and I am confused by this issue on how to fix it. Any idea on what is causing this?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 384

Answers (1)

Stein Åsmul
Stein Åsmul

Reputation: 42136

Self-Repair: This is self-repair. I have written a lot about it before:

Cause: Essentially a key path check on application launch reveals a missing resource. Self-repair ensues to correct the situation (put file or registry key in place). Sometimes the repair fails for various reasons as explained in above link - and keeps repeating endlessly (from various triggers).

Shortlist Debugging: Self-repair is a simple concept, but can be quite difficult to wrap your head around to solve reliably at times. Some first things to try:

  • Verify Problem: It is very important to estimate whether this problem is a real one or a developer box problem. Test on virtuals.
  • Anti-Virus: I would try to disable my anti-virus or security suite and then try to launch the product. You should obviously first scan the files to verify the are not flagged as dangerous.
  • Advertised Shortcut: I would also try to launch the file in question directly from the installation folder without using a shortcut (see section 5.2 here).

You can determine what MSI package this relates to as follows:

  1. Find product name for product GUID. Use this script to find the product name for the product GUID you see in the event log. You know what product you launch, but you can trigger self-repair of other products by launching your own.
  2. Find what product a component belongs to. Use this script to look up what product(s) (there can be more than one) have a particular MSI component in use.

Find these VBScripts here as well: https://github.com/glytzhkof/all

Upvotes: 1

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