I agree that your work-around is not the desired approach for addressing this.
But at least it allows some investigation of the problem w/out completely hosing
the machine state. We haven't ruled out the installation package as the culprit
just yet, but I'd agree that this is not the most likely cause.
I'd like to see if we can determine the actual cause of this problem, since it's
unusual for the entire %windi%\Installer folder to be completely deleted during
an installation. My experience with this is that it only happens when ACLs are
altered. The Windows Installer has two primary configuration data locations:
registry & file system (%windir%\Installer). On start up of the service, it
will check the security of the locations.
Here's the first suggestion:
1) cmd prompt: kill -f msiexec.exe
2) make sure the %windir%\Installer folder is at the normal state (your backup
collection)
3) cmd prompt: net start msiserver
After starting the service, is the Installer folder still in tact?
Second suggestion:
One other aspect that is interesting is whether or not this deletion only occurs
when you install this package. Is that true? If you install some other simple
MSI package (maybe something that only installs a text file), does the same
thing happen. I'd try out the scenario making the backup again first, and then
running through the installation.
The other suggestions I'd have are:
1) Definitely re-verify the ACLs using cacls.exe.
2) Set the Windows Installer logging and debug policies in the registry:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Installer]
"Debug"=dword:00000007
"Logging"="voicewarmup"
3) Obtain the following tools from
http://www.sysinternals.com:
(
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/utilities.shtml)
DebugView + FileMon
4) Ensure that the installer service isn't started (net stop msiserver from a
cmd prompt) and that the %windir%\Installer folder is in tact via what you
usually back up
5) Start up debugview and filemon (filemon need only filter on the
%windir%\Installer folder)
I'm hoping that #5 will give us some insight from the Installer as to what it's
doing (via the logging and debug policies) and from filemon as to which process
is responsible for deleting the files and folder. If you're running debugview
with the Debug + Logging policies set, the Installer service will log to debug
output if it detects an insecure configuration data location. That's something
to look for.
Let me know what you find out...
Hope this helps,
- Carolyn Napier
Microsoft Windows Installer Team
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