Fortuneomg

On Windows 10, cannot uninstall Vipre Internet Security 2016. Attempt to uninstall raises the the error '“Error opening installation log file. Verify that the.

UPDATE: I updated this post slightly to address some good criticsm fromRobMenschingby removing the MsiZap section. Note that this post does not blame theWindows Installer for the few problems we have with ASP.NET MVCinstallations. The major culprit tends to be either devenv /setup orngen.exe.

The point in this post is to provide tools for those who are verycareful, know what they are doing, and really want to take a peek at howthe installer works. These tools can help provide insight to whether thetwo culprits I just mentioned really are the issue causing theinstallation to fail in your particular case. Everything I point outhere IS AT YOUR OWN RISK! :)

For the most part, the installations for ASP.NET MVC have been quitestable and we’ve tested the installer at every release and 99% of theproblems we’ve run into fall into those two buckets. I did not intend togive the impression that we saved installation testing for the lastmoment, because that’s just not true. We merely had a last minuterequirementchangefor our installer. RC 2 was a response to that change, not to a bugfound. Now back to the post. :)

Pdq Msi Error 1622 Error Opening Installation Log File

Having an installer crap out on you when you’re excited to try out a newpiece of software is an incredibly frustrating experience. Frustratingboth for the user as well as for the product team. Every time I read onTwitter that someone is having trouble installing ASP.NETMVC, a new ulcer throbs in myside.

A big part of the frustration is the lack of control and insight intowhat’s going wrong. Jacques (no blog), a developer on the ASP.NET teamhas put together a troubleshooting guide based on his research into whatmakes installers tick to help alleviate some of this lack of control.While his focus was primarily on the ASP.NET MVC installer, much of thisinformation is useful for all MSI installers.

Windows Installer Log Files

Log files are not automatically generated by an MSI. To generate a logfile, you will need to use msiexec from a command prompt to installthe MSI, for example

msiexec /i AspNetMVC1-RC2.msi /l*v .install.log

Alternatively you can enable logging by default by configuring aregistry key for this. See this article on enabling Windows InstallerLoggingor if you are using Windows XP, take a look at this article on the sametopic specific to WindowsXP.Please note that enabling this feature can have an impact on systemperformance.

The MSI logs are probably the best place to start when trying to figureout why an installation failed. At the very least you will be able toidentify the step in the installer that caused the problem.

For example, one common source of trouble is when a required service isnot started such as:

• .NET Optimization Service
• ASP.Net State Service

Visual Studio Log Files

The ASP.NET MVC specific context menus in Visual Studio are installed byexecuting devenv.exe with the /setup switch. When the installerexecutes this command it automatically generates a log file at thelocation

%TEMP% MvcTemplates.log

The log file can be consulted for more details in case this step of theinstallation failed.

Orca

Error Opening Installation Log File Fedex

Orca is an editor for Windows install packages (MSI files) and is partof the Windows InstallerSDK(the Orca MSI is located at %Program Files%MicrosoftSDKsWindowsv6.0Abin). While we don’t generally encourage people toedit the ASP.NET MVC installer, for those willing to take matters intotheir own hands (at your own risk!) Orca can be used to disable some ofthe steps executed by the installer. When you open the MSI you will seeall the tables used by the installer. The feature table is probably themost interesting since it shows everything that will be installed.

Notice that by default, the Level attribute of all the features are setto 1. This means that the feature is enabled to be installed. We havesome logic that will disable some of the features based on theinformation that we gather about the system on which were areinstalling. For example, the VWDExpress_Feature will be disabled if auser does not have Visual Web Developer installed. Similarly we willdisable one of the MvcGacNgenXX_Features depending on whether theunderlying OS is a 64-bit or 32-bit version.

Let’s say that you’ve tried to install MVC, but for some reason theinstaller fails to create a native image for System.Web.Mvc.dll usingNGEN. Using Orca you can disable the MvcGACNgen32_Feature andMvcGACNgenAll_Feature by deleting these two rows from the MSI andsaving it under a different name. Of course the best thing to do is toinvestigate why NGEN is failing in the first place.

Editing the MSI is not really encouraged since it may cause otherproblems such as failing to uninstall properly.

NGEN failures

We automatically GAC and NGENSystem.Web.Mvc.dll during the setupprocess. Installing into the GAC (Global Assembly Cache) is arelatively painless operation. NGEN on the other hand is more prone tocausing the installer to fail.

When installing via double clicknig the MSI, you will see an errormessage before the installation is rolled back if NGEN fails. The errormessage itself is not that useful as it will most likely just show acryptic message and an HRESULT value (You can do a web search for theHRESULT and see whether there are workarounds available). To investigatethe failure, take a look at the log generated by the MSI (assuming youhad logging turned on when you made the install). Open the log file andsearch for ExecNetFx (this is the name of the WiX component theinstaller uses to run NGEN).

The example above is a very difficult problem to troubleshoot, but thereare a few things you can try:

• Open a command prompt, go to%WINDIR%Microsoft.NETFrameworkv2.0.50727 and execute thefollowing commands and then try to install MVC again
  • ngen ExecuteQueuedItems
  • ngen Update
• Examine the NGEN log files located in%WINDIR%Microsoft.NETFrameworkv2.0.50727. There are twofiles, ngen.log and ngen_service.log. The logs may containinformation about other problems in the system that caused thefailure, for example a missing DLL that may cause an updateoperation to fail when NGEN attempts to update invalid nativeimages.
• Make sure that the .NET Runtime Optimization service is running

Windows Event Viewer

Msiexec Log Location

The installer executes a number of external tasks during theinstallation process.

• devenv.exe /installvstemplates: This step is used to register theMVC project templates in Visual Studio. (For Visual Web Developerthe executable is called VWDExpress.exe).
• devenv.exe /setup: This step is executed to merge all the metadatain Visual Studio and is used by the MVC packages to register thecontext menus.
• ngen.exe install: Used to generate native images of theSystem.Web.Mvc assembly. Seethisarticle for more details.
• ngen.exe update: Updates any native images that have become invalid.

You will most likely see multiple warning events such as the examplebelow. Visual Studio will log warning events for unknown attributes itencounters in templates and usually just moves past them. These warningscan be safely ignored.

But you may see other events that may cause the install to fail such asthe example below:

Solving this problem is easy enough; restart the Cryptographic Serviceand run the installer again.

Visual Web Developer Express

A few users have reported that after installing MVC, they don’t see anoption to create an MVC Web Application Project in Visual Web Developer.If you run into this problem, try the following:

• Open VWD.
• Go to Tools and select Import and Export Settings.
• Select Reset all settings and click Next to complete the wizard.

Third Party Utilities

A number of users have reported problems during the installation of MVCor when trying to use some of the shortcuts inside Visual Studio. Inmany cases this was resolved by removing certain add-ins:

• PowerCommands
• Clone Detective
• Spec# and F#

If you review the MSI logs you will most likely see something like thefollowing:

Msi Error 1622 Error Opening Installation Log File

If installing MVC fails in this manner, try the following:

Error Opening Installation Log File While Installing Kb973685

• Create a log file, for example, devenv.log.
• Open a Visual Studio command prompt and execute devenv /setup /logdevenv.log. Make sure that you have administrator rights sincethat’s required by the /setup switch.
• Scan the log file and look for any <description> elements thatcontain errors. This may point to problematic packages that arecausing devenv.exe to fail when MVC is trying to configure itscontext menus.

Another option to try is the following:

Error Opening Installation Log File When Trying To Uninstall Program

• Open a Visual Studio command prompt.
• Start Visual Studio by executing the command devenv /ResetSkipPkgs.
• Close Visual Studio.
• Execute devenv /setup.