Failed to marshal script action.

[bkieler]

There is some component missing from a Windows 2003 64-bit server that is preventing the installer created with Advanced Installer from running. This installer has worked for years up until this one new server. The errors are:

MSI (c) (FC:D4) [13:34:36:702]: Failed to marshal script action.
MSI (c) (FC:D4) [13:34:36:702]: Failed to marshal script action.
Action ended 13:34:36: SetDate. Return value 3.
MSI (c) (FC:24) [13:34:36:702]: Doing action: FatalError

I reregistered vbscript and oleaut32.dll, and there was no change.

Would anyone know what Windows component could be missing?

[Bogdan]

Hi,

The failure you are seeing, "Failed to marshal script action", is caused by the inability of the Windows Installer to instantiate a COM object to support its runtime script engine. This failure is most often caused by the lack of or corrupted registration of the Microsoft OLE Automation library OLEAUT32.DLL.

You should confirm that this file is installed on your target system, and that is is correctly registered using regsvr32.exe.

Microsoft updated this file in Patch MS07-43 (KB921503) and MS08-08(KB943055). Since these are both important security updates, you should have both of them already installed. Also, for Windows Xp and 2003 SP1, this file should be a protected system file, and any attempt to unregister it will return an access violation. However, it's registry signature could also be corrupted.

Regards,
Bogdan

[thill]

Encountered this today (17 May 2016).

The solution we found came from Microsoft: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3020338

Hope it helps anyone else hitting their head on this particular rock

[Eusebiu]

Hi,

Thank you for sharing the solution with us, I'm sure it will help other users in the future.

Best regards,
Eusebiu

[Rizi]

Hi,

we have the same problem on a client machine, just on that! And this problem only occurs with our latest installer of our software which was build by
using Advanced Installer v. 12.8.

With an slightly older installer of our software the problem on this client machine doesn´t appear! This older installer was build in June 2015
and we used the current version of Advanced Installer at this time. Unfortunately i´m not able to find out which version it was.

Since this time we did not change the installer a lot, especially regarding any the scripts (VB) we use.

So what could be the reason that this problem only occurs by using new version of Advanced Installer?

Further it´s not possible to install the Microsoft update (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3020338) on that machine, for any unknown reason so far!

So any help would be appreciated very much!


Best regards,

Rico

[Eusebiu]

Hi Rico,

I'm not sure why the problem appears only in a package created with a newer Advanced Installer version. Can you please send us, to support at advancedinstaller dot com, a sample package that has this issue and the details of a machine that we should test this on in order to reproduce and investigate the problem?

Best regards,
Eusebiu

[Rizi]

Hi Eusebiu, thank´s i will do that.

Best regards,

Rico

[Eusebiu]

Thank you for the test files Rico. I will investigate them and get back as soon as I have a conclusive answer.

Best regards,
Eusebiu

[Eusebiu]

Hi Rico,

I tested the resources that you sent on multiple machines, but I couldn't reproduce the problem. Unfortunately, there's no way to determine what's causing this unless we can replicate the behavior.

The issue still seems to be specific to some other configurations or applications from the machines it is reproducible on (i.e. Windows Updates, antivirus, services, etc). In order to fix it you can also try the following solutions:

1. Register the following DLL files from an administrator Command Prompt:

Code: Select all

regsvr32.exe vbscript.dll
regsvr32.exe oleaut32.dll
regsvr32.exe jscript.dll
regsvr32.exe msxml3.dll
regsvr32.exe -i shell32.dll

Restart the machine after registration if the issue still persists.

2. The scripts might be blocked by the antivirus, so you can try to disable it during the installation.

3. Register the Windows Installer service:

Code: Select all

C:\Windows\System32\msiexec.exe /regserver
C:\Windows\SysWOW64\msiexec.exe /regserver

Best regards,
Eusebiu

[Rizi]

Hi Eusebiu,

unfortunately the suggested solution didn´t help. Any further ideas?

Thank you very much,

Rico

[Eusebiu]

Hi Rico,

I'm almost out of ideas. Can you please send me the project and the resulted packages built with an older version of Advanced Installer that works and with the newer version that does not work, so I can test and compare them? I may also need a Virtual Machine where this problem can be reproduced on, otherwise I'm afraid that we cannot debug it.

Best regards,
Eusebiu

[Zsolt Kollarits]

Hi all,

Is there a solution already for this issue? The latest version of our product has been created by using Advanced Installer 12.8, right after the release many of our customers started to complain about installation problems.

All of them see "Failed to marshal script action." in the log file, this error prevents them from installing the latest product. During installation we run a VB script, however we didn´t touch that custom action for a while now - for sure we didn´t touch it since our previous release.

The previous release was built by Advanced Installer 12.0, back then the customers - who are complaining now - could install that version without any problems. It means the executables which was prepared by AI 12.0 could run the VB script successfully.

It´d be highly appreciated if we could figure out a solution as more and more customers are blocked due to this problem.

Note: We asked all of the customers to perform the steps advised by Eusebiu, however it didn´t fix their issues.

Best regards,
Zsolt

[Eusebiu]

Hi Zsolt,

Were you able to reproduce the problem on one of your machines? Does the problem appear if you build the latest version of your product with Advanced Installer 12.0? Can you send us the resources I mentioned in my previous post, so we can investigate them and try to find the problem?

Best regards,
Eusebiu

[Zsolt Kollarits]

Hi Eusebiu,

Unforunately we're not able to reproduce the issue in our office although we tried to install the EXE of our latest product on many different machines and OS'. Nevertheless many of our customers can reproduce it on their side, we could see their installation problems while checking their machines via TeamViewer. Apparently we perform the exact same steps on their machines and on our machines, however the EXE cannot be installed on their side. Double-clicking on the EXE file of our latest release (prepared by AI 12.8) starts the installation as expected, but it always gets suspended when reaching one of our custom actions which is trying to execute a VB script.

We don't have any explanation why the script - and the customer action - works fine on our side, but on some customers side it doesn't. I'm going to send our executable via mail to support@advancedinstaller.com.

Please let me know if you have any news regarding this! Unfortunately more and more customers are coming back to us, because they are not able to install our latest release.

Best regards,
Zsolt

[Eusebiu]

Hi Zsolt,

We still investigate this issue and we will update this thread as soon as we come to a conclusion. Can you please tell me if the issue appears only during the upgrade of your application or it appear at the first install, too?

Best regards,
Eusebiu