Inquiring minds have discovered that for some reason the Windows Installer service goes on for about 10 minutes and asked 'what that heck?'. Yes, it is by design that the Windows Installer service will remain running after the install. If there are...

If you were in the prerelease program of Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1, then please be sure to remove the prerelease from your system before resuming normal computation. It was pointed out that this uninstall clause in the RTM Readme , "Before You...

Windows and other vendors are growing our security messages to include advice on improving the security of your existing systems. Some of the guidance includes the messages that services that run as Local System unnescicarily it increase the potential...

If you see MSI log entry Custom Action Server rejected - Wrong Context. logged during installs on 64 bit platforms, you may have an incorrectly registered custom action server. This log entry will be preceeded by the log entry Hello, I'm your 64bit Elevated...

No additional work is required by an application installed with Windows Installer as MSI tells system restore when to start and when to stop monitoring. Here's an example of a log entry for the system restore start (uninstalling orca.msi from the SDK...

Windows Installer Error Messages [Windows Installer] describes the standard and debug errors from the Windows Installer engine. Error Table [Windows Installer] describes how a package can customize the these standard and debug error messages. The Error...

When applying a second patch, error 1328 “file is modified by other means” can occur when the second patch did not obsolete the first patch. Please review Creating a Small Update Patch [Windows Installer] and property ListOfPatchGUIDsToReplace at Properties...

Windows Installer writes Add/Remove Programs with the RegisterProduct Action [Windows Installer] . For which portions of ARP MSI supports, please review the existing Configuring Add/Remove Programs with Windows Installer [Windows Installer] . If there...

When Windows Installer logs the InstallValidate Action , the MSI engine reports the three states of a the componets and features in the product. For example, the following report says a component current state is absent, the user requested the component...

When one starts working with transforms , whether for patching or for administration , digging in a bit further may be useful to solve the problems at hand. If this is you, here's some frequently asked questions Q: What tools are available to build...

When folks start using upgrades with the Windows Installer the question 'where's my upgrade log?' quickly follows. Here are some initial details to upgrade logging Q: Where is my upgrade log? A: The upgrade logging is added to the log of the enclosing...