"This installation package could not be opened."

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I want to add another fix to the list of problems that users have reported. This is kind on an addendum to my previous post on the topic, and I'll cross-link these two.

Several users have reported variations of one of two errors:

  • Installation of the "Microsoft Windows Software Development Kit" product has reported the following error: This installation package could not be opened. Contact the application vendor to verify that this is a valid Windows Installer package.
  • Unable to find an entry point named "MsiSetExternalUIRecord" in DLL 'msi.dll'.

We've found that this is caused by users having outdated versions of msi.dll and msiexec.exe installed on their machines. Running Microsoft Update should resolve this problem.

Variation: for users running IA64 machines with Windows Server 2003, you will need to download the update seperately by applying the patch for KB898715, which is not deployed by Microsoft Update.

https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=8B4E6B93-1886-4D47-A18D-35581C42ECA0&displaylang=en&Hash=75BB5K4