Installation cancelling itself without user interaction

[cainrandom]

Hello,

On one particular customer system, the installer is advancing from the "Verify Ready" dialog to the "Installation Progress" dialog, whereupon the user immediately sees a "Do you want to cancel?" dialog. The installation aborts whether they say yes or no. Here's the relevant portion of the log:

Action start 13:28:32: VerifyReadyDlg.
Action ended 13:28:32: VerifyReadyDlg. Return value 1.
MSI (c) (4C:FC) [13:28:32:623]: Doing action: ProgressDlg
Action 13:28:32: ProgressDlg.
Action start 13:28:32: ProgressDlg.
Action ended 13:28:33: ProgressDlg. Return value 1.
MSI (c) (4C:FC) [13:28:33:826]: Note: 1: 2262 2: AI_AppSearchEx 3: -2147287038
MSI (c) (4C:FC) [13:28:33:826]: Note: 1: 2205 2: 3: AI_TempFile
MSI (c) (4C:FC) [13:28:33:826]: Note: 1: 2228 2: 3: AI_TempFile 4: SELECT `Property` FROM `AI_TempFile`
MSI (c) (4C:FC) [13:28:33:826]: Note: 1: 2262 2: AI_PreRequisite 3: -2147287038
MSI (c) (4C:FC) [13:28:33:826]: Note: 1: 2205 2: 3: AI_XmlLocator
MSI (c) (4C:FC) [13:28:33:826]: Note: 1: 2228 2: 3: AI_XmlLocator 4: SELECT `Property` FROM `AI_XmlLocator`
MSI (c) (4C:FC) [13:28:38:467]: Doing action: UserExit
MSI (c) (4C:FC) [13:28:38:467]: Doing action: UserExit
Action 13:28:38: UserExit.

I'll send the whole installation log as well as the AIP file via email.

Thanks!

[Daniel]

Hello Cain,

This might happen if you are using an EXE setup package which was signed outside Advanced Installer. Please take a look over our "Why the "Are you sure you want to cancel installation" message is thrown after clicking the [ Install ] button?" faq and let us know if this helped.

All the best,
Daniel

[cainrandom]

Daniel,

While I am using an EXE setup package and the enhanced UI, the EXE is signed by AI during the build (I sent the AI project file that indicates this). This shouldn't be the problem, then, right?

[cainrandom]

I should also note that this problem is only occurring on one customer machine and cannot otherwise be reproduced. I also provided this customer with other versions of the same product and they said they encountered the same problem. I have no idea what's going on.

[cainrandom]

Any update? Thanks!

[Daniel]

Hello Cain,

I apologize for the delayed reply.

Can you please check if on the related customer machine the digital signature of your setup files (EXE MSI and CAB) is recognized as trusted? Please check if the related system see as valid the signature and also the countersignature of your setup package. If not, please try to manually install the certificates chain of your digital signature and of the countersignature too in the "Trusted Root Certification Authorities" section of your LOCAL MACHINE certificates store.

At install time the MSI and CAB files are extracted into the path specified in your setup project -> "Builds" page -> "Configuration" tab -> "Extract location" field. So, when the cancel prompt appear just try to access the MSI and CAB file in the above path and check their signature and countersignature properties.

Let us know if this helped.

All the best,
Daniel

[cainrandom]

Thank you, Daniel. We'll investigate along the lines you've suggested.

[Daniel]

You're welcome Cain.

All the best,
Daniel

[loganips]

Have there been any updates on this particular issue? We are encountering the same behavior in our installer.

Thanks,
Logan

[Daniel]

Hello Logan,

In our latest versions of Advanced Installer the setup package thrown an explicit error when there is a signature mismatch between the EXE setup and MSI setup file. So, you can try to rebuild your setup project with our latest Advanced Installer version (14.1.1).

However, please note that the installation still fails, but with an explicit message. This is because we do not allow for security reasons to install EXE setup packages with a different signature than the MSI installation database. So, you should make sure that the EXE setup and its embedded MSI database file are signed with the same certificate.

Let us know if this helped.

All the best,
Daniel

[loganips]

After building our installer with the most recent version of Advanced Installer (14.2) we are still encountering this issue. We are using Advanced Installer to sign the installer files and have verified that the digital signatures are trusted. The installer pops the cancel dialog right before the installer execution phase of the install. We have found that disabling the enhanced UI seems to solve this issue. This issue only occurs on a handful of computers and we have not been able to reproduce this issue ourselves.

Thanks,
Logan

[Daniel]

Hello Logan,

Could you please check if the setup (replicating the weird behavior) was running on machines without Internet connection? Also, could you test it on some test machines without Internet connection?

Any test case you found to reliably replicate this issue will be very useful for us.

All the best,
Daniel

[loganips]

Hello Daniel,

The setup that encountered the issue was running on machines with internet connection. I tried running the setup on a few test machines with no internet connection and it seems to work fine.

Are there any other possible causes that we could check?

Thanks,
Logan

[Daniel]

Hello Logan,

I'm afraid I'm not aware of other things you could check. The most useful thing for us will be to be able to isolate a pattern when this happens.

All the best,
Daniel

[TheM]

Hi Daniel,

We are encountering this issue as well -- install progresses up to a point where it suddenly asks the user if he wants to cancel and there is no way to go past that point.

Customer has Windows Server 2016. Application installs correctly on a fresh install of Windows Server 2016 but not when they apply their group policies. We don't know what those policies are.

I do see in the long that 'DisableMsi' is set to 1 but this is a default setting for Windows Server 2016 and it doesn't prevent installation on vanilla WS2016 setup. We did ask them to try setting 'DisableMsi' to 0 but that didn't help.

The log is full of so "Creating MSIHANDLE"/"Closing MSIHANDLE" so I cleaned it up a bit here -- this is the end:

Action ended 14:04:37: InstallValidate. Return value 1.
MSI (c) (A4:00) [14:04:37:999]: Creating MSIHANDLE (1105) of type 790531 for thread 3328
MSI (c) (A4:00) [14:04:37:999]: Closing MSIHANDLE (1105) of type 790531 for thread 3328
MSI (c) (A4:14) [14:04:37:999]: Doing action: VerifyReadyDlg
Action 14:04:37: VerifyReadyDlg.
MSI (c) (A4:00) [14:04:37:999]: Creating MSIHANDLE (1106) of type 790531 for thread 3328
MSI (c) (A4:00) [14:04:37:999]: Closing MSIHANDLE (1106) of type 790531 for thread 3328
Action start 14:04:37: VerifyReadyDlg.
MSI (c) (A4:00) [14:04:37:999]: Creating MSIHANDLE (1107) of type 790531 for thread 3328
[...]
MSI (c) (A4:A0) [14:04:37:999]: Creating MSIHANDLE (1117) of type 790531 for thread 13472
Action ended 14:04:37: VerifyReadyDlg. Return value 1.
MSI (c) (A4:00) [14:04:37:999]: Creating MSIHANDLE (1118) of type 790531 for thread 3328
[...]
MSI (c) (A4:A0) [14:04:37:999]: Creating MSIHANDLE (1121) of type 790531 for thread 13472
MSI (c) (A4:14) [14:04:37:999]: Doing action: ProgressDlg
MSI (c) (A4:A0) [14:04:37:999]: Creating MSIHANDLE (1122) of type 790531 for thread 13472
[...]
MSI (c) (A4:A0) [14:04:37:999]: Closing MSIHANDLE (1124) of type 790531 for thread 13472
Action 14:04:37: ProgressDlg.
MSI (c) (A4:00) [14:04:37:999]: Creating MSIHANDLE (1125) of type 790531 for thread 3328
[...]
MSI (c) (A4:A0) [14:04:37:999]: Closing MSIHANDLE (1128) of type 790531 for thread 13472
Action start 14:04:37: ProgressDlg.
MSI (c) (A4:A0) [14:04:37:999]: Creating MSIHANDLE (1129) of type 790531 for thread 13472
[...]
MSI (c) (A4:A0) [14:04:38:124]: Closing MSIHANDLE (1336) of type 790541 for thread 13472
Action ended 14:04:38: ProgressDlg. Return value 1.
MSI (c) (A4:00) [14:04:38:124]: Creating MSIHANDLE (1340) of type 790531 for thread 3328
[...]
MSI (c) (A4:14) [14:04:38:124]: Creating MSIHANDLE (1459) of type 790541 for thread 7700
MSI (c) (A4:14) [14:04:38:124]: Note: 1: 2262 2: AI_AppSearchEx 3: -2147287038
MSI (c) (A4:14) [14:04:38:124]: Creating MSIHANDLE (1460) of type 790540 for thread 7700
[...]
MSI (c) (A4:14) [14:04:38:140]: Creating MSIHANDLE (1796) of type 790541 for thread 7700
MSI (c) (A4:14) [14:04:38:140]: Note: 1: 2205 2: 3: AI_TempFile
MSI (c) (A4:14) [14:04:38:140]: Note: 1: 2228 2: 3: AI_TempFile 4: SELECT `Property` FROM `AI_TempFile`
MSI (c) (A4:14) [14:04:38:140]: Closing MSIHANDLE (1796) of type 790541 for thread 7700
MSI (c) (A4:14) [14:04:38:140]: Creating MSIHANDLE (1797) of type 790541 for thread 7700
MSI (c) (A4:14) [14:04:38:140]: Note: 1: 2262 2: AI_PreRequisite 3: -2147287038
MSI (c) (A4:14) [14:04:38:140]: Creating MSIHANDLE (1798) of type 790540 for thread 7700
[...]
MSI (c) (A4:14) [14:04:38:140]: Creating MSIHANDLE (1801) of type 790541 for thread 7700
MSI (c) (A4:14) [14:04:38:140]: Note: 1: 2205 2: 3: AI_XmlLocator
MSI (c) (A4:14) [14:04:38:140]: Note: 1: 2228 2: 3: AI_XmlLocator 4: SELECT `Property` FROM `AI_XmlLocator`
MSI (c) (A4:14) [14:04:38:140]: Closing MSIHANDLE (1801) of type 790541 for thread 7700
[...]
MSI (c) (A4:A0) [14:07:45:168]: Closing MSIHANDLE (1908) of type 790541 for thread 8608
MSI (c) (A4:14) [14:07:45:168]: Doing action: UserExit
Action 14:07:45: UserExit.
MSI (c) (A4:00) [14:07:45:168]: Creating MSIHANDLE (1913) of type 790531 for thread 3328
MSI (c) (A4:00) [14:07:45:168]: Closing MSIHANDLE (1913) of type 790531 for thread 3328
Action start 14:07:45: UserExit.
MSI (c) (A4:00) [14:07:45:168]: Creating MSIHANDLE (1914) of type 790531 for thread 3328
[...]
MSI (c) (A4:F8) [14:07:46:637]: Closing MSIHANDLE (1963) of type 790541 for thread 10744
Action ended 14:07:46: UserExit. Return value 2.
MSI (c) (A4:00) [14:07:46:637]: Creating MSIHANDLE (1968) of type 790531 for thread 3328
MSI (c) (A4:00) [14:07:46:637]: Closing MSIHANDLE (1968) of type 790531 for thread 3328
MSI (c) (A4:14) [14:07:46:637]: Closing MSIHANDLE (350) of type 790540 for thread 7700
MSI (c) (A4:14) [14:07:46:637]: Closing MSIHANDLE (349) of type 790541 for thread 7700
MSI (c) (A4:14) [14:07:46:637]: Creating MSIHANDLE (1969) of type 790541 for thread 7700
MSI (c) (A4:14) [14:07:46:637]: Note: 1: 2205 2: 3: Environment
MSI (c) (A4:14) [14:07:46:637]: Note: 1: 2228 2: 3: Environment 4: SELECT `Environment`,`Component_` FROM `Environment`
MSI (c) (A4:14) [14:07:46:637]: Closing MSIHANDLE (1969) of type 790541 for thread 7700
MSI (c) (A4:14) [14:07:46:637]: Creating MSIHANDLE (1970) of type 790531 for thread 7700
MSI (c) (A4:08) [14:07:46:653]: Closing MSIHANDLE (1970) of type 790531 for thread 7700
MSI (c) (A4:08) [14:07:46:653]: Closing MSIHANDLE (5) of type 790537 for thread 7700
MSI (c) (A4:08) [14:07:46:653]: Destroying RemoteAPI object.
MSI (c) (A4:68) [14:07:46:653]: Custom Action Manager thread ending.
=== Verbose logging stopped: 7/16/2018 14:07:46 ===

Package was created with Advanced Installer 14.1.1. Strangely, the customer says that they were able to install our prior release which was also built with AI 14.1.1 with one difference being that it had legacy digital signing enabled (SHA1). When we repackaged the latest release to also include SHA1 that did not help -- installation still failed in the same way. There were no other differences: same certificate, same timestamp service, same prerequisites.

Not knowing their exact group policy setting we were unable to reproduce this problem in our test environment but we did manage to trigger what appears to be the same issue in a different way. When customer is installing this package they have it on a local drive -- this never fails for us. However, when we put the package on a network drive, we can trigger the problem from ONE of our networks.

The file server used for testing has two network cards, each connected to a different network. Network installs work on one network but not on the other. This is not of a concern to us because we can always tell the customer to copy installation package to a local drive; this is only of interest because it seems to trigger the same problem. The following are two logs for the SAME machine -- the first one is for a SUCCESSFUL install from LOCAL drive, the second one is for a FAILED NETWORK install that exhibits the same symptoms as the failed customer install from their local drive (i.e. installation starts then stops with "Are you sure you want to cancel installation?" without any user interaction).

Success from local drive:

Action ended : InstallValidate. Return value 1.
Doing action: VerifyReadyDlg
Action : VerifyReadyDlg.
Action start : VerifyReadyDlg.
Action ended : VerifyReadyDlg. Return value 1.
Doing action: ProgressDlg
Action : ProgressDlg.
Action start : ProgressDlg.
Action ended : ProgressDlg. Return value 1.
Note: 1: 2262 2: AI_AppSearchEx 3: -2147287038
Note: 1: 2205 2: 3: AI_TempFile
Note: 1: 2228 2: 3: AI_TempFile 4: SELECT `Property` FROM `AI_TempFile`
Note: 1: 2262 2: AI_PreRequisite 3: -2147287038
Note: 1: 2205 2: 3: AI_XmlLocator
Note: 1: 2228 2: 3: AI_XmlLocator 4: SELECT `Property` FROM `AI_XmlLocator`
Note: 1: 2205 2: 3: AI_ChainedPackage
Note: 1: 2228 2: 3: AI_ChainedPackage 4: SELECT `ChainedPackage` FROM `AI_ChainedPackage`
Note: 1: 2205 2: 3: Environment
Note: 1: 2228 2: 3: Environment 4: SELECT `Environment`,`Component_` FROM `Environment`
Doing action: ExitDialog
Action : ExitDialog.
Action start : ExitDialog.
PROPERTY CHANGE: Deleting RUNAPPLICATION property. Its current value is '1'.
Action ended : ExitDialog. Return value 1.
Destroying RemoteAPI object.
Custom Action Manager thread ending.
=== Verbose logging stopped: 20/07/2018 ===

Fail from network drive:

Action ended : InstallValidate. Return value 1.
Doing action: VerifyReadyDlg
Action : VerifyReadyDlg.
Action start : VerifyReadyDlg.
Action ended : VerifyReadyDlg. Return value 1.
Doing action: ProgressDlg
Action : ProgressDlg.
Action start : ProgressDlg.
Action ended : ProgressDlg. Return value 1.
Note: 1: 2262 2: AI_AppSearchEx 3: -2147287038
Note: 1: 2205 2: 3: AI_TempFile
Note: 1: 2228 2: 3: AI_TempFile 4: SELECT `Property` FROM `AI_TempFile`
Note: 1: 2262 2: AI_PreRequisite 3: -2147287038
Note: 1: 2205 2: 3: AI_XmlLocator
Note: 1: 2228 2: 3: AI_XmlLocator 4: SELECT `Property` FROM `AI_XmlLocator`
Doing action: UserExit
Action : UserExit.
Action start : UserExit.
Action ended : UserExit. Return value 2.
Note: 1: 2205 2: 3: Environment
Note: 1: 2228 2: 3: Environment 4: SELECT `Environment`,`Component_` FROM `Environment`
Destroying RemoteAPI object.
Custom Action Manager thread ending.
=== Verbose logging stopped: 20/07/2018 ===

Any suggestions?

Regards,
Harvey