Fixing Error 1603 on MSI installs

For some reason that I have not been able to figure out yet, I have been having problems with some software installations failing on my Windows 7 system with a message like this (or similar to this):

In this case, it was installing Intellipoint, but I had the problem with installing Mozy Backup client, VirtualBox, and a couple other apps that I don't remember right now.  I was able to fix each of these installations individually, and will describe it here (so that I can find it again when I need it).  But this does not seem to be a widespread problem, and I am still not sure why my system does this and not (many) others.

I used the instructions on John McBride's blog (Virtual Box 3 and Windows 7 (Making it work!)), with a couple of additional items relating to logging the install and finding the msi installation package.

1. First, we need to see the log to see what caused the 1603 error above.  By default, any system does not keep the installation logs or the installer files when it fails.  So first we need to have Windows Installer log its steps so the we can see what caused the error.  Using instructions from MS Support (How to enable Windows Installer logging) I edit the registry with the following entry:
   
REGEDIT4
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Installer]
"Logging"="voicewarmup"

Or you can save this to a file and dbl-click it to install it in your registry.  This will create a log file in your temp directory for each installation using Windows installer. 
   
2. So now run your install that will fail again.  Don't answer the error message yet!  When you answer, it will clean up the installation files and you may want to grab those files first.
   
   Did you start the installation by running an .msi file?  Then that is good, you have the file that you need to possibly fix.  But it is likely you started using an .exe file, and it is a compressed self-extracting file, the .msi is packed in that file with other files for the setup process.  We want the files that were extracted.
   
   Go to your Temp directory to open the log file.  (Tip: at least in Vista and Win7, you can easily get to your Temp directory by clicking Start button and typing "%Temp%" without the dbl-quotes; hit enter and you're there.)  The log file will be named Msi*.log, and probably the most current file is the one you are after.  Open it in your favorite text editor.
   
   In the log file, within the first 20 lines or so, it will tell you where the temp directory that the files were extracted.  In this case, it's a line like this:
   
   Package we're running from ==> C:\Users\Mark\AppData\Local\Temp\msiB374.tmp\mozy.msi
   
   This shows our installation files are in C:\Users\Mark\AppData\Local\Temp\msiB374.tmp\, so go there are copy the directory to another directory so you have copies of the files to work with.
   
   Now you can answer the error message and let the installation clean up after itself. 
   
3. (The rest of this is from John McBride's blog (Virtual Box 3 and Windows 7 (Making it work!)).)
   You will need Orca MSI Editor from the Platform SDK installation ( I used Windows 7 Platform SDK).  For these particular errors, it a problem with the DIFXAPP drivers in the installation package.  I got updated files DIFxApp.dll and DIFxAppA.dll from the Windows Driver Kit for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 (from MSDN Downloads).
4. Open the MSI file in Orca MSI Editor.  Select the Binary table on the left.  You should see the 2 dll's listed on the right.
   
5. Delete each of these rows: right-click on the row and select "Drop Row".
6. Right click in empty area on the right side and select "Add Row".  Navigate to the location of the updated drivers from the Drivers Library (C:\WinDDK\7100.0.0\redist\DIFx\DIFxApp\WixLib\x86).  Add both the DIFxApp.dll and DIFxAppA.dll files, making sure the row name is the same as the DLL file name.
7. Save the MSI file.
8. Install.
   

That's it.  Each of the 4 installations worked for me then.

Using Windows 7 and Vista features in .Net code

Just released from Microsoft:

Windows? API Code Pack for Microsoft? .NET Framework (v0.90) - Home

Vista Bridge Sample Library 1.4

Some of the newer features in Vista and Windows 7 are not exposed in the .Net Framework (yet).  This package of source code from Microsoft shows how to access and use these features from managed code.  Some of the features here are:

Windows 7 Taskbar Jump Lists, Icon Overlay, Progress Bar, Tabbed Thumbnails, and Thumbnail Toolbars.

Known Folders, Windows 7 Libraries, non-file system containers, and a hierarchy of Shell Namespace entities.

Windows 7 Explorer Browser Control.

Shell property system.

Windows Vista and Windows 7 Common File Dialogs, including custom controls.

Windows Vista and Windows 7 Task Dialogs.

Direct3D 11.0, Direct3D 10.1/10.0, DXGI 1.0/1.1, Direct2D 1.0, DirectWrite, Windows Imaging Component (WIC) APIs. (DirectWrite and WIC have partial support)

Sensor Platform APIs

Extended Linguistic Services APIs

Power Management APIs

Application Restart and Recovery APIs

Network List Manager APIs

Command Link control and System defined Shell icons.

Keep Vista from Changing Folder View : Steve Smith's Blog

For future reference.  This actually works!

Keep Vista from Changing Folder View : Steve Smith's Blog

IE Critical Update

Microsoft has released the ultra-important IE Update. 

Run your Windows Update ASAP (if not sooner).

This fixes the recent exploits that have been working for the past 5 days or so.

A little geek humor at Microsoft

Just discovered a little geek humor at Microsoft. 

I have the unfortunate task of upgrading a VB6 app to run properly under Vista.  No, I could not upgrade the app to .Net, just "fix" the VB app and its installer.  So I'm installing VB6 in a Vista virtual machine (do not want to mess up my host machine), and having a little problem when starting VB, an error that mscomctl.ocx is not registered.  But it is, and I hunt down Dependency Walker (Depends) to make sure.  It's OK, and its components are OK, also. 

So I run profiler from Depends to start up VB6 and see what happens.  Find an error message*, and stop the profiler. That in turn stops the VB6 application, and profiler dutifully logs the exit return code, and helpfully translates the exit code to hex:

Terminating process by user's request.
Exited "VB6.EXE" (process 0xB84) with code 57005 (0xDEAD).

Had to chuckle.  And then went to calc.exe to confirm, decimal 57005 is hex 0xDEAD.

(*for what it's worth, the error is "GetProcAddress(0x75E70000 [KERNEL32.DLL], "IsTNT") called from "MSCOMCTL.OCX" at address 0x27588909 and returned NULL. Error: The specified procedure could not be found (127)."  Now I got to got figure that one out.)

Backup that USB flash drive

I had a problem with a flash drive this weekend, and it points to a problem that we all should be aware of.

Flash drives (those USB memory sticks) have a limited life to them. The cheaper ones (most all of those that you can buy now) can only be written to approximately 10,000 times. (More expensive drives can be written to 100,000 – 200,000 times, but all drives have a limited life that way.) Now, for most uses, that can be a very long time. But if you depend on a single drive for frequent usage, it can fail.

I have been using a Lexar 8gb ExpressCard SSD (solid-state disk) in my laptop for holding my ReadyBoost cache for Windows Vista. ReadyBoost improves system performance dramatically, especially in a laptop. However, after about 1½ years, the memory card failed. That’s when I found out about this limited life for flash drives. Although Microsoft says flash drives for ReadyBoost should last 10 years, my device may have had a defect, or a bug in Vista that was fixed may have caused extra unnecessary rewriting of the device when resuming from standby (which I do all the time instead of shutting down). For now, I am just getting another memory card and doing the same thing. If, in another 18 months, it fails again, then I will reconsider more expensive memory, but $47 for 18 months of use is not a bad trade-off.

So, if you are using a USB drive to do frequent backups (that’s you, Dad), you should be aware that the drive could fail, and have an alternate storage of that data. If you are backing up your QuickBook files to a USB flash drive, make another copy of that drive each time to another device, preferably a hard drive with better life. Or maybe an online backup like using Mozy, Windows Live Skydrive, or even just storing it in a Gmail account.

How to install Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP1 on Vista x64/x86 - The Bamboo Team Blog

 

How to install Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP1 on Vista x64/x86 - The Bamboo Team Blog

I will have to give this a try.  It would make developing for SharePoint much easier than having to install server OS in a VirtualPC instance.

Fixing Windows Vista, Taming UAC

 

Fixing Windows Vista, Part 2: Taming UAC | Ed Bott’s Microsoft Report | ZDNet.com

Useful article for getting around some of Vista UAC annoyances, but still keeping UAC in place (and why you want to keep UAC and not totally disable it).

How To Search Your PSTs with Vista's Built-In Search | Sarah In Tampa | Channel 10

Do you archive your email to PST files (maybe due to a corporate policy limiting your mailbox size)? ...With Vista's built-in search option, you can specify that you want PSTs to be indexed (this is not turned on by default).

How To Search Your PSTs with Vista's Built-In Search | Sarah In Tampa | Channel 10

Vista SP1 Installed

Check your languages installed

Well, I bit the bullet and installed Vista SP1 today.  Overall, looks OK right now, but I did have a problem starting up the SP installation.  SP1 would not install, saying I did not have valid language pack installed.  I am certainly running English-US, setup for US settings, so I had a problem why this was saying I was not.  Checking a few things, I saw that somehow I had Hebrew language also installed (not sure why or how, as I cannot read Hebrew).  Once I uninstalled that language and restarted, then the SP1 install went flawless.  I just started it and left it alone for a couple hours, so I'm not sure how long it really took.

I don't see much difference right now.  I will post back if I notice anything.

Windows Vista SP1 is done

Windows Vista SP1 is done | Ed Bott?s Windows Expertise |

Microsoft announced that Windows Vista Service Pack 1 has concluded its beta testing and has been released to manufacturing. So, does that mean you can install it today? Nope.

Hotfix for Vista ICS

Aaron Tiensivu's Blog: KB 937168 - After you configure Internet Connection Sharing in Windows Vista, the network connection stops working after one-to-two hours.

After you configure Internet Connection Sharing in Windows Vista, you may find that, although the network connection works correctly at first, the network connection stops working after one-to-two hours. For example, you may be unable to connect to the Internet, to other computers on the local area network (LAN), or to network resources on the LAN. .... This problem occurs because of a bug in the WinSock bind() function.

Ran across this problem setting up loopback adapter for VirtualPC to be able to still access internet. Internet access is through cell modem (Sierra Wireless 875U), so cannot use the adapter and get another IP address. Also need to access host-2-guest and guest-2-host without having DNS server, so needed to use loopback adapter.

Get a faster hard drive

Tip/Trick: Hard Drive Speed and Visual Studio Performance - ScottGu's Blog

Scott Guthrie (manager in MS Developer Division and VS guru) says getting faster hard drive is better for VS than faster processor. He explains this, and offers some other tips for optimizing VS performance.