How to gather additional information in case XNA Game Studio 2.0 setup fails
Since XNA Game Studio 2.0 shipped back in December, we've heard of a few installation issues from customers via the team blog and the forums. Many of the issues have been tracked back to a Games for Windows LIVE redistributable issue and can be resolved by using the steps in this forum post or this blog post. However, we've also seen a few cases with other root causes.
If you run into an install issue with XNA Game Studio 2.0 and have already tried the workaround described above and it did not help, then there is some additional information that can be useful to diagnose the failure:
XNA Game Studio 2.0 setup creates a set of log files that will be located in the following folders if setup fails:
%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft XNA\XNA Game Studio\v2.0\Setup\Logs
%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft XNA\XNA Game Studio\v2.0\Setup\TME
%windir%\Logs\DirectX.log
%windir%\Logs\DXError.log
The instructions in this blog post will gather a list of installed MSI-based products on your system. This list can be useful in diagnosing setup failures caused by previous beta versions of XNA Game Studio or conflicts with other software installed on the system
If you run into an XNA Game Studio 2.0 install failure, please gather the above information and contact me and/or post a comment on the XNA forums so we can take a look.
<update date="7/23/2008"> Added information about DirectX error logs that can be useful in some cases where XNA Game Studio 2.0 setup fails. </update>