General installation issues - .Net/ Visual Studio/ TFS / Service Packs

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If you are running into installation issues for .Net Framework / Visual Studio / TFS and any of the assosciated Service Packs, the troubleshooting would proceed as below

Always try the installations using the Windows Administrator account login which is the most priviliged

1) The error message if any displayed is a good text to search for in the Internet. You can try using indvidual key words from the error, especially error codes, they should give good number of results.

2) If the error messages do not help, we need to look into the installation logs which are in the windows temporary folder. To get there, go to Start-> Run and type %temp% and press enter.

3) Enabling Installation logging

 .Net Framework - 1.0 / 1.1 / 2.0 / 3.0 / 3.5 installation issues, Visual Studio - 2002 / 2003 installation issues, Team Foundation Server Service Pack 1 and Team Explorer installation issues we need to enable the installation logging so that we can get the installation log files to get to more details of the issue

To enable logging, you can use the msidebug.reg registry merge file from https://astebner.sts.winisp.net/Tools/Forms/AllItems.aspx

or manually add the following to registry. Becareful editing registry, its always a good idea to take a backup of registry before you edit it.

Go to Start-> Run and type regedit and press enter

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Installer

Create a new string variable named "logging" with a value "voicewarmupx!"

It is not required to enable installation logging for Visual Studio 2005 and Team Foundation Server product installation, as it is by default. But for Service Pack 1 installation for VS 2005, you need to manullay enable it

4) Once you enable installation logging, you can reproduce the installation issues and get the installation log files from the %temp% folder.

5) One of the key installation file is VSmsi****.log or the msi*****.log .

Search for the string "value 3" (without Qoutes), this should usually point you to the failure step. Look in and around the "Value 3" entry in the log to get more information about the failure. If you do not get the string "value 3" in the msi logs, you can search for the same in the other files.

Once you have more information you can do the search in the internet for troubleshooting further.

One of the wonderful places you can look for installation issues is https://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/, i learnt most of things from here when i started( and continue learning till today) :)

6) Most of the times its seen that the Anti-virus/ Firewall on the machine interferes with the installation of Products. Its a good idea to disable Anti-Virus/ Firewall temporarily for the purpose of testing the installation and see if it helps.

The other step is to try the installation in Windows Diagnostic mode which is more recommended of the fact(there won't be any internet connection, so no worries of Virus sneaking in when it is disabled). The diagnostic mode starts up with minimum number of services that means minimum interference with the windows installer.

Please boot the machine in the Normal Windows Mode and try the steps to reboot the machine in the Diagnostics mode.

1) Go to Start-> Run and type msconfig and press enter.

2) In the window that appears, under the Startup Type, please select Diagnostic mode

3) Then go to the Services tab and select the following services that are required for installation/repair in Diagnostic startup which are not selected by default

a) Plug and Play

b) System Restore Services

c) Windows Installer

4) Now press the apply button and then ok. This will ask you to re-start the machine, hit re-start.

5) Once you re-start the machine in Windows Diagnostic mode, re-try the installation and see if it helps.