Tuesday 15 March 2011

Debugging MSI installer errors

Some notes on debugging MSI installer errors.

Run the MSI using this command:
msiexec /i "" /l*vx "C:\logname.log"

Run the MSI until the error occurs, then browse through the resultant log. Some common errors include:


DEBUG: Error 2826: Control Line1 on dialog FatalErrorForm extends beyond the boundaries of the dialog to the right by x pixels

You can ignore this one. It's simply telling you that a control on the dialog exceeds the boundaries of that dialog box by x pixels.


From what I've read, the trick to reading installer logs is to search from the top for the text string "Return value 3", then look at the lines immediately preceeding the occurence.

Entries with errors begin with the string "ERROR :" in the logs.