Is Microsoft's MSI installer inherently flawed?

tbernstein · Joined: May 16, 2003 Posts: 1576 Location: London

I've lost count of the times that an installation, uninstallation or update has failed over the years.
And, usually this is because the setup has failed to find an MSI file that simply isn't there for it to find. This is almost always a setup file from a previous installation, i.e. something that is being replaced or removed anyway. But the MSI won't proceed because it isn't there.
That's not too much of a bother if I'm just removing the thing, MS has a tool to get round that, but if I'm trying to install a new version and the setup fails because it can't find the old MSI that's just plain annoying.

This has been triggered because today I got fed up with Acrobat trying and failing to install some updates. So i decided to uninstall it. And then start from scratch.
But then the installer, as noted above, refused to play. Instead it gave me a message saying that it couldn't find the file c:\users\local\adobe\setup.msi (or something like that)

Well it can't find it because it isn't there.
So what am I supposed to do? If it isn't there, it isn't there and a message telling me it isn't there isn't helping at all.

But as noted above, this isn't just with the Adobe. It happens a lot.

goretsky · Posted: Fri Jul 17, 2009 1:05 am Post subject:

Hello,

I have never had this problem myself, but seen it happen on systems where "improvement" or "junk file clean-up" programs were run.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

tbernstein · Joined: May 16, 2003 Posts: 1576 Location: London

My several experiences of this suggest that one cause can indeed be the clean up when the installation of a previous version placed important files long term files in a temp folder. And since Microsoft designated these folders as temp places for temporary files, it seems pretty reasonable to be qble to clean them out. That's what temporary means..
Another casue seems to be when the installer was on a network folder.
And sometimes there doesn't seem to be any reason at all

But that's not the real issue. The flaw is in the logic of the MSI installer. it's the "So what" factor.
Which is to say, I have a full install. I want that install to run.
The installer thinks that there should be a certain file on the system already, but can't find it. So what. If it can't find it then it isn't there. So move on. There's no point leaving messges to say that it isn't there and that you have to find it, when you can't find it and don't need it anyway, becasue you have a complete install running anyway.
All that said. I freely admit that I have no idea why the MSI would want to find that old file, if there are new ones to install. It certainly doesn't seem logical to me. Rolling Eyes

.
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drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 1546 Location: Central FL, USA

One caveat............ The Windows Installer program can be shut off in
Services.msc .

If it is indeed shut off, NO .msi program will run.

Just a thought.

The Doctor Cool

tbernstein · Joined: May 16, 2003 Posts: 1576 Location: London

I happened to follow through on an installation from an MSI today.
And sure enough. Wthout allowing me to choose its behaviour the .msi installed itself in and then from the \windows\temp folder.
There are two issues here.
One is that the software installed from an .msi is not readily removable (even by an upgrade to itself) if the original installer is missing and
Two, the original installer places itself in a folder that is by definition temporary.
There is both a significant contradiction here and a significant waste of HDD space.
So I'm pretty much answering my own question. Embarassed

In my opinion the .msi idea is very flawed.

goretsky · Posted: Thu Aug 06, 2009 3:57 am Post subject:

Hello,

From what I recall, the Microsoft Software Installation service stores data about software installations in the %windir%\INSTALLER\ directory, and while an installation is underway uses a temporary directory named %homedrive%\CONFIG.MSI to hold store information about the installation currently being performed.

If, for some reason, the information stored in the %windir%\INSTALLER\ directory is missing or corrupt, the service prompts for the location of the original MSI and looks at the information in it to determine if there are any additional steps needed to complete the uninstallation of a program.

The %homedrive%\CONFIG.MSI directory should only be present when an installation is running or pending some operation (i.e., perhaps a reboot is required to finish installing a program).

I would be hesitant to remove either directory on a computer I was operating. If I did need to for some reason, though, I would rename or move the directory to another location. That way, if I needed it later I could restore it.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

tbernstein · Joined: May 16, 2003 Posts: 1576 Location: London

Interesting.
I've never had my grubby paws on that folder.
And none of the MSI problems I've met over the years, on my machine or others, have wanted to find that folder.
There's something about this software that isn't good.