Earlier, in my blog, I digested a piece of a legacy internal troubleshooting document into the post: Troubleshooting: InstallValidate Nulled out my Request. Turns out there's more to this story. We've received a report of an Uninstall in which the REMOVE request was nulled out.

Troubleshooting Evidence From Log

…
REMOVE=Complete,FooServices,ClientTools
…

InstallValidate saw

MSI (s) (D0:58) [13:18:00:230]: Feature: FooServices; Installed: Advertise; Request: Absent; Action: Absent

Which reading the MSI means these component entries are relevant

MSI (s) (D0:58) [13:18:00:230]: Component: FooServiceConfig; Installed: Local; Request: Null; Action: Null
MSI (s) (D0:58) [13:18:00:230]: Component: FooServiceLocalSystem; Installed: Local; Request: Null; Action: Null
…
MSI (s) (D0:58) [13:18:00:230]: Component: BarEngineDBComponent; Installed: Absent; Request: Null; Action: Null
…

Explanation

First of all, the feature: FooServices installed state is Advertise because one of its components (BarEngineDBComponent) is marked as Absent.

Now, when a feature’s installed state is Advertise or Absent and action request is Advertise or Absent, its components’ Action states are NULL (assuming a one-to-one mapping of feature-components).

Alternative

Given this information, can you consider moving the BarEngineDBComponent component to a different feature?

Content credit also belongs to

[Author: Robert Flaming]
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