HELP: Microsoft Games setup is extremely hosed?

[Guest]

This is bizarre and extremely aggravating:

Every Microsoft game I try to install runs the setup for *Crimson Skies*
instead of the game I'm trying to install. I first encountered this when I
tried to install the Dungeon Siege II demo, but so far I've tried
Freelancer, Age of Mythology, Halo, and Mechwarrior Vengeance, and it's
always the same: run setup off the CD, and no matter what CD it is, the
Crimson Skies installer will run. And (of course) clicking install anyway
to see what happens won't work if the game's not Crimson Skies.

I've reinstalled and uninstalled and reinstalled Crimson Skies, thinking
that it might clean up some dangling files. I've tried running the Windows
Installer Cleanup Utility. I've tried booting into safe mode and nuking my
temp directory. I've tried logging in with other user accounts on my
machine. Nothing works.

I'm running XP Service Pack 2 with all of the latest updates.

Any suggestions, please?

Thanks...

 

[Kelly]

Hi,

Suggestions:

Look in the root folder on the drive for a file named "Autorun.inf" and
delete it. If that doesn't apply:

Q: Windows Installer start every time I start XP.
A: If you have SpywareGuard installed, disable it and try again.

Added info:

"Every time I launch my application, Windows Installer performs an
installation. How can I determine the cause of the on-demand installation?"
http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/community/centers/management/msi_faq.mspx

Windows Installer Issues (Line 348) Right hand side
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_tweaks.htm

Windows Installer Logging or Cleanup Utility (Line 84)
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_tweaks.htm

Windows Installer will store the logs in the TEMP directory. The filename is
random, but begins with the letters "Msi" and end with a .log extension.

Windows Installer CleanUp Utility (Office Products)
http://download.microsoft.com/download/office2000pro/util20/1/NT4/EN-US/msicuu.exe

Troubleshooting Windows Installer
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_w.htm#xp_wininstaller

--

All the Best,
Kelly (MS-MVP)

Troubleshooting Windows XP
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com

 

[Guest]

Thanks, but digging around through the suggested links didn't help either.

Somehow, there's some sort of dangling crap leftover on my system from the
Crimson Skies install. If I could just figure out how to wipe this out I
think I could fix this...

Hi,

Suggestions:

Look in the root folder on the drive for a file named "Autorun.inf" and
delete it. If that doesn't apply:
[snip]
All the Best,
Kelly (MS-MVP)

This is bizarre and extremely aggravating:

Every Microsoft game I try to install runs the setup for *Crimson Skies*
instead of the game I'm trying to install. I first encountered this when
I tried to install the Dungeon Siege II demo, but so far I've tried
Freelancer, Age of Mythology, Halo, and Mechwarrior Vengeance, and it's
always the same: run setup off the CD, and no matter what CD it is, the
Crimson Skies installer will run. And (of course) clicking install
anyway to see what happens won't work if the game's not Crimson Skies.

I've reinstalled and uninstalled and reinstalled Crimson Skies, thinking
that it might clean up some dangling files. I've tried running the
Windows Installer Cleanup Utility. I've tried booting into safe mode and
nuking my temp directory. I've tried logging in with other user accounts
on my machine. Nothing works.

I'm running XP Service Pack 2 with all of the latest updates.

Any suggestions, please?

Thanks...

 

[Guest]

Anyone else have any suggestions? I'd hate to have to reinstall Windows
because of this...

Thanks,

 

[Guest]

A great idea...unfortunately, I just tried it, and that didn't work either.

This is really, really strange.

Last night I ran a file system monitor utility that I wrote to see what
files were hit during the install, and - apart from the prefetch and log
stuff that usually gets touched whenever you access anything - all the
action happened in the local storage temp directory. Since I cleaned that
out prior to the last attempt to install a Microsoft game, I can't see how
that would be it. I also did a grep through the file system and the
registry looking for the string 'Crimson Skies' but nothing came up.

An interesting note: I dug out my Rise of Nations CD - a Microsoft Studios
game - and it installed with no problem.

Somewhere on my drive (and/or buried in my registry) lurks some stubborn
leftover setup files that I need to nuke. Is there any reference anywhere
that would give me some insight into how I could find and remove this cruft?

Thanks for the replies so far...

 

[Guest]

Fixed! Finally.

After digging around a bit, I finally tracked the problem down...looks as
though the setup resources are stored in a file called SETUPENU.DLL. For
some reason, an outdated version of this file was hanging around in my
Windows system directory. Every time setup ran, it probably found this file
in the path first and loaded it instead of the correct version. I nuked
this file, and the problem went away.

Now I can try out that Dungeon Siege II demo....

Thanks...