[wix-users] Burn Protocol for ExePackage Usage

[Rob Mensching]

This sounds very much like an old Burn bug. Sean or Tobias may remember the details. Wouldn't surprise me if vc_redist didn't get the bug fix.

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-----Original Message-----
From: wix-users [mailto:wix-users-bounces at lists.wixtoolset.org] On Behalf Of Edwin Castro
Sent: Friday, October 2, 2015 10:18 AM
To: WiX Toolset Users Mailing List <wix-users at lists.wixtoolset.org>
Subject: Re: [wix-users] Burn Protocol for ExePackage Usage

On Fri, Oct 2, 2015 at 6:54 AM, Phill Hogland <phill.hogland at rimage.com> wrote:
> Also typically (with exceptions) services do not have windows message pumps or use windows messages which I do not believe allowed to cross Desktop boundaries.  However a typical Burn based bundle has a bootstrapper application which uses windows messages.  When Burn spans a child process CreateProcess is used (rather than CreateProcessAsUser with a WinStation/Desktop defined to the launching process's WinStation\Desktop, as a service would be implemented).  With CreateProcess the child process ends up in a different WinStation\Desktop than the launching process and windows messages appear to hang.  So I suspect launching a bundle under the NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM  context,  may work in some situations with a careful bundle design, but in general there are many reasons why it may also 'hang' and not work.


I think this is spot on.

Yesterday I found a cached page on bing to a connect issue (I can't access the page or it was deleted or something) where someone reported the same issue I'm seeing but for vcredist_x86.exe for Visual Studio 2013.

http://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=vcredist_x86.exe+hangs+%22Windows+Server+2008%22&d=4705331440193611&mkt=en-US&setlang=en-US&w=l958eCobVL5bvN_6GzGAic6JDHPA3beP

Using psexec -s -i allows me to install vcredist_x86.exe successfully on Windows Server 2008.

I'd like to point out that vcredist_x86.exe (for Visual Studio 2012) will install through our configuration management tool successfully on Window 7 and later so it appears that something changed in the operating system between Windows Vista / Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7 / Windows Server 2008 R2 that allows the same package to work in the later operating systems.

I'm now evaluating whether one of the strategies mentioned in

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/winsdk/archive/2009/07/14/launching-an-interactive-process-from-windows-service-in-windows-vista-and-later.aspx

might help me get over the hump.

--
Edwin G. Castro