Earlier this week, a co-worker ran into an error while installing XNA Game Studio on his computer, and he asked me for help figuring out what caused the problem.  I realized that I follow essentially the same set of steps to narrow down the root cause every time I run into an XNA Game Studio setup problem.  I want to post these steps on my blog to try to help teach people how to identify root causes and hopefully help solve XNA Game Studio setup problems on their own instead of always needing to rely on a setup expert to analyze and interpret their log files.

Here are the steps I use to narrow down the root cause of an XNA Game Studio setup failure:

1. Go to the folder that contains the log files for the version of XNA Game Studio that you are trying to install.  See the list at the end of this blog post for the setup log file locations for each version of XNA Game Studio.
2. Sort the folder by last modified date.
3. Open the most recent file named GameStudioSetup-*.log in a text editor such as Notepad.
4. Search for the string Bootstrapper.exe error.
5. Most of the time, this will lead you to an error occurring while installing one of the MSIs chained in by XNA Game Studio setup, and the error will list a log file that contains more detailed information about the cause of the error.  For example:

   Bootstrapper.exe Error: 0 : In Task InstallPlatformTools: MSI Task Processor Failed on task: Installing XNA Game Studio Platform Tools \n Please consult C:\Users\myusername\AppData\Local\Temp\XNA Game Studio 4.0 Setup\Logs\xnags_platform_tools-20101025.180123.LOG for additional log information.

6. Open the log file listed in the error message in step 5, search for the string return value 3 and try to narrow down the failure further from there.

You can see a specific example of this technique in this blog post about troubleshooting XnaLiveProxy installation problems.

The above steps will not work for 100% of all possible XNA Game Studio setup failures, but based on my past experience, they will work in most cases.  Finding the root cause is only the first step, and the steps you need to take to solve a setup problem will vary depending on what the root cause is.  I’ve found that some setup problems have solutions that are pretty self-explanatory once you know what the root cause is though, so hopefully the above steps will help some people be able to more quickly diagnose and solve XNA Game Studio installation problems.

As always, if you run into a problem that you are unsure of the resolution for or if you have trouble interpreting the information in the XNA Game Studio setup log files, please post a comment on the App Hub forums and/or contact me.  When posting on the forums, please zip your XNA Game Studio setup log files, upload the zip file to a file server (such as http://skydrive.live.com) and include a link to the log files in your post to allow us to investigate and offer workarounds more quickly.

XNA Game Studio setup log file locations

XNA Game Studio setup creates setup log files at the following locations:

• XNA Game Studio 2.0 - %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft XNA\XNA Game Studio\v2.0\Setup\Logs
• XNA Game Studio 3.0 - %temp%\XNA Game Studio 3.0 Setup\Logs
• XNA Game Studio 3.1 - %temp%\XNA Game Studio 3.1 Setup\Logs
• XNA Game Studio 4.0 - %temp%\XNA Game Studio 4.0 Setup\Logs

As noted on the XNA Game Studio team blog today, the Xbox LIVE Indie Games publishing pipeline is now accepting XNA Game Studio 4.0 games in addition to XNA Game Studio 3.1 games.  This was originally scheduled to be enabled last Friday, but it slipped out a few days due to a couple of last minute issues that we ran into at the end of last week.  As a result, the 90 day window when you will still be able to submit XNA Game Studio 3.1 games has been moved out accordingly.  The last day you will be able to submit an XNA Game Studio 3.1 game for Xbox LIVE Indie Games is Monday, February 7, 2011.

Please see the following locations for more information about supported versions of XNA Game Studio for Xbox LIVE Indie Games and Xbox 360:

• Blog post - http://blogs.msdn.com/b/xna/archive/2010/11/08/xblig-4-0-submission-now-open-on-app-hub.aspx
• App Hub news announcement - http://create.msdn.com/xblig_40_submissions_open

A while back, I wrote a blog post describing how to extract the contents of the XNA Game Studio 2.0, 3.0 and 3.1 setup packages and install the components manually in case the normal installation process fails.  I just went back and updated that blog post to also list the steps for extracting and manually installing XNA Game Studio 4.0.

I’ve gone back and forth about whether or not to update this type of older blog posts in place as new product versions are released or post new ones.  In this case, I decided to update the existing post since I can then have a single location to point people to for all versions of XNA Game Studio.  However, I also wanted to post a new item about this to help improve visibility since I’m not sure how often folks go back and look at older content.

Here is a copy of the steps I added for XNA Game Studio 4.0.  Note - for the instructions below, if you are running a 64-bit version of Windows, you will need to use %programfiles(x86)% instead of %programfiles% for the installation paths.

Please refer to the previous post for instructions for all versions of XNA Game Studio.

To manually install XNA Game Studio 4.0 

1. Download xnags40_setup.exe and save it to your hard drive
2. Run xnags40_setup.exe /x to extract the contents to a folder of your choosing
3. Go to the folder you extracted to in step 2 and run the MSI named redists.msi

   Note: This MSI will only display a small progress bar while it is installing and will not tell you when it is done.  When the progress bar disappears, continue to the next step.

4. Run the MSI at %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft XNA\XNA Game Studio\v4.0\Setup\XLiveRedist.msi
5. Run the MSI at %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft XNA\XNA Game Studio\v4.0\Redist\XNA FX Redist\xnafx40_redist.msi
6. Run the MSI at %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft XNA\XNA Game Studio\v4.0\Setup\xnaliveproxy.msi
7. Run the MSI at %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft XNA\XNA Game Studio\v4.0\Setup\xnags_platform_tools.msi
8. Run the MSI at %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft XNA\XNA Game Studio\v4.0\Setup\xnags_shared.msi
9. Run the MSI at %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft XNA\XNA Game Studio\v4.0\Setup\xnags_visualstudio.msi
10. Go to the folder you extracted to in step 2 and run the MSI named arpentry.msi

<update date="11/8/2010"> Added a note about the %programfiles(x86)% path on 64-bit versions of Windows. </update>

<update date="11/21/2011"> Removed an incorrect step from the list. </update>

Last month, there was an item posted on the XNA Game Studio team blog with a rough timeline for when to expect the final release of the 4.0 version of XNA Game Studio Connect and the opening of the Xbox LIVE Indie Games publishing pipeline for 4.0 games.  Today, the exact release dates were announced in this new post on the XNA Game Studio team blog and in this news item on the App Hub site.  Here is a summary of the key information announced there:

• The final 4.0 version of XNA Game Studio Connect is scheduled to release on Friday, November 5, 2010.  It will support deploying, debugging and running games created with XNA Game Studio 3.1 and 4.0, but will no longer support games created with XNA Game Studio 2.0 or 3.0.
• You can start submitting Xbox LIVE Indie games created with XNA Game Studio 4.0 for play-testing and peer review as soon as the final 4.0 version of XNA Game Studio Connect is released on Friday, November 5, 2010
• You can continue to submit Xbox LIVE Indie games created with XNA Game Studio 3.1 for 90 days after the final 4.0 release.  That means that the last day that 3.1 games will be accepted for play-testing and peer review is Thursday, February 3, 2011

Stay tuned to the App Hub site on Friday, November 5, 2010 for the official announcement that the Xbox LIVE Indie Games publishing pipeline is open for 4.0 games.  There will also be reminders over the next 90 days as the end of the window to submit games created with XNA Game Studio 3.1 approaches.