Build hanging with merge modules

[GregDude]

Recently, sometime after adding some Visual C runtime merge modules, my installer no longer completes a build via the IDE.
The installer project hasn't changed, and I'm still using AI v13.2.2.
So I guess this is a recent conflict with Windows 10 or Visual studio 2013/2017.

First I see this...

AI_Popup1_cropped.jpg (90.8 KiB) Viewed 4986 times

...which does complete.
Then I see this...

AI_Popup2_cropped.jpg (81.44 KiB) Viewed 4986 times

...which never ends. Clicking Cancel does nothing. I must use Task Manager to kill AI process.
Although partly obscured, the last item in the log is 'Writing Summary Information'

If I remove the .msm merge modules, this does not occur.

This issue looks similar to this old report:
Forum Post - Problem with 8.4
That person said the issue went away after a Windows 7 update. That was a few Windows versions ago.

[Daniel]

Hello and welcome to our forums,

Please take a look on our "Please wait while Microsoft configures Visual Studio Community 2015..." thread which debates the same issue and a possible resolution.

Let us know if this helped.

All the best,
Daniel

[GregDude]

Thanks for responding Daniel.
Looking at the other forum thread...

I can't uninstall VS2013 or VS2017 as I need both at this time.

I searched my HDD for mergemod.dll and found 16 instances in:
C:\Program Files (x86)\, folders \Common Files, \Microsoft SDKs and \Windows Kits. Every instance unique.

Importantly I saw these instances:
Intel/86
C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\microsoft shared\MSI Tools
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.1A\Bin
C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\8.1\bin\x86
C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\bin\x86
C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\bin\10.0.15063.0\x86
C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\bin\10.0.16299.0\x86

I tried registering the latest x86 sdk version with
regsvr32.exe mergemod.dll

After that, regedit showed
Most in Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node
use C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\bin\10.0.16299.0\x86
One instance of
Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\SharedDlls
C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\MSI Tools\mergemod.dll
I noticed on disk the 'Common Files\Microsoft Shared\MSI Tools\mergemod.dll' was still different from the others
so tried manually copying the latest .dll.

None of this had any affect on Advanced Installer. It still hangs when merge modules are used as per screen shots.

[Daniel]

Hello,

Could you just uninstall and then reinstall the VS2013/VS2017 on your current machine and see if the reinstallation helps you?

Also, if you could find a step by step test case which would consistently replicate this behavior on a test machine this will be great. We have never been able to replicate this issue on our side so we can further investigate the cause.

All the best,
Daniel

[GregDude]

Here's what I found...

After uninstalling VS2013, the problem did not occur.
After reinstalling VS2013 with update 5, the problem reoccurred.

I left the "Preparing to Install" [Cancel] dialog on screen and returned about 2hrs later.
A new dialog, shown below appeared "Install server not responding" [Retry] [Cancel].
Canceling this dialog allowed the installer build to complete successfully.

AI_AfterLongWait.jpg (62.02 KiB) Viewed 4940 times

I have not been able to try a clean machine repro, and can't readily do that at my location.

[Daniel]

Hello,

Thank you for your reply, but unfortunately we have no clear view about what could cause this strange behavior. At a first glance there seems to be a conflict between Windows Installer installed modules and the VS ones. Maybe the WI ones somehow interfere with the VS installed SDK. Unfortunately we do not know exactly what could be the cause.

If you could find out a test case on other machines too so we can replicate this on our side too, them maybe we could somehow try to troubleshoot this on our end.

All the best,
Daniel

[Daniel]

Hello,

After further testing and investigating this we found out that this behavior could be caused by a Visual Studio installer package issue. Similar to the one exposed in the "Trouble installing other products after Visual Studio" thread.

Looking in the Event Viewer when the related behavior occurred we saw that Windows Installer service is looking for a URTInstallPath_GAC folder. In Event Viewer we got an error like this:

Code: Select all

Detection of product '{9C593464-7F2F-37B3-89F8-7E894E3B09EA}', feature 'Visual_Studio_Professional_x86_enu', component '{E3FF99AA-78B9-4A06-8A74-869E9F65E1FE}' failed. The resource 'C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\URTInstallPath_GAC\' does not exist.

When we manually created the 'C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\URTInstallPath_GAC\' folder the related behavior went away.

So, as a possible solution you can search for such event viewer event, identify the missing folder, manually create it on your machine and see if it solves the issue for you too.

Accordingly to the "Trouble installing other products after Visual Studio" thread, it seems that the Microsoft setup package through which certain Visual Studio features are installed is misconfigured. It simply has assigned a folder for one of its components which is never installed. Also, the related setup package also registers a COM server module and each time a function exposed by the COM server is called on the system, Windows Installer performs an integrity check for the product installation. It founds that a component directory is missing and therefore it will try to launch a setup package repair so that the related missing folder be reinstalled. This is why manually creating the related folder should work. It will simply avoid the repair operation triggered when the product installation integrity check fails.

All the best,
Daniel

[Daniel]

Another customer just confirmed us that solved this by installing some additional visual studio components, as follows (before he had only Microsoft Foundation Classes for C++):

gfmoamapidakjcep.png (17.45 KiB) Viewed 4580 times