How to work around a possible XNA Game Studio setup failure on Windows 10 technical preview

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A while back, I wrote about an application compatibility issue that can cause the Windows Phone SDK and XNA Game Studio to fail to install on Windows 8 and Windows 8.1.  Recently, I heard from a colleague who ran into a similar-sounding issue when trying to install XNA Game Studio on the Windows 10 technical preview.  After looking at the setup log files, I confirmed that the same application compatibility issue that affected these installers on Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 also affects them on Windows 10.  The application compatibility dialog that appears in this scenario on Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 links directly to the blog post that contains the workaround, but the equivalent dialog on the Windows 10 technical preview doesn’t link there currently.

How to work around this issue

To summarize my other blog post, if you run into an issue installing XNA Game Studio on the Windows 10 technical preview, you can solve it in most cases by downloading and installing the latest version of the Games for Windows – LIVE Redistributable from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=5549 or https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=201134, then re-running XNA Game Studio setup.

What to do if the workaround doesn’t help

If you have already installed the latest version of the Games for Windows – LIVE Redistributable and XNA Game Studio setup still fails, you are running into a different issue than the one described above, and you will have to look at the setup log files to determine the root cause.

You can find XNA Game Studio setup log files at the following locations:

  • XNA Game Studio 4.0 Refresh - %temp%\XNA Game Studio 4.0 Setup\Logs
  • XNA Game Studio 4.0 - %temp%\XNA Game Studio 4.0 Setup\Logs
  • XNA Game Studio 3.1 - %temp%\XNA Game Studio 3.1 Setup\Logs
  • XNA Game Studio 3.0 - %temp%\XNA Game Studio 3.0 Setup\Logs
  • XNA Game Studio 2.0 - %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft XNA\XNA Game Studio\v2.0\Setup\Logs

Once you have gathered your setup log files, please upload them to a file server of your choice (such as https://onedrive.live.com), and post a link to the log files in a comment on my blog to get additional support.

How to diagnose this issue

You can tell if this issue is the one causing XNA Game Studio to fail to install on your computer by doing the following:

  1. Look at the main XNA Game Studio setup log (named something like GameStudioSetup-20141019.123456.LOG in the log directory listed above).  It will show an error like this:

    Bootstrapper.exe Information: 0 : Failed to install C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft XNA\XNA Game Studio\v4.0\Setup\xnaliveproxy.msi for Task InstallXnaLiveProxy with Message = Microsoft.WindowsInstaller.InstallerException: Fatal error during installation.

  2. Look at the log file for xnaliveproxy.msi (named something like xnaliveproxy-20141019.123456.LOG in the log directory listed above).  It will show an error like this:

    CustomAction InitializeXnaLiveProxy returned actual error code -1073741512 (note this may not be 100% accurate if translation happened inside sandbox)

The error code -1073741512 means STATUS_ORDINAL_NOT_FOUND (The ordinal could not be located in the dynamic link library.)  That error code is the indicator that you’re running into the Game for Windows – LIVE application compatibility issue.

<update date="12/21/2015">Fixed broken download link for Games for Windows - LIVE Redistributable. </update>