Pending MSI Reference When Uninstalling Assebly from the GAC

J

Jan Kidrud

Ones I install an assembly in the GAC, I'm unable to unstall it. This diables loading of debug symbols (pdb) of the assembly. This must be a well-known issue, but I didn't succeed in finding a description in the MS knowledge base. Does anybody know a solution to this symptom?

An example follows.

1. uninstallation from GAC

E:\>gacutil -nologo -u xAssignment_3S_4_0.Logger

Assembly: xAssignment_3S_4_0.Logger, Version=1.1.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKey
Token=c5158ce0bd1c56b3, Custom=null
Unable to uninstall: assembly is required by one or more applications
Pending references:
SCHEME: <WINDOWS_INSTALLER> ID: <MSI> DESCRIPTION : <Windows Ins
taller>

Number of items uninstalled = 0
Number of failures = 0


E:\>


2. a message from VS .NET when loading debug symbols of the assembly

'Assignment_3S_4_0.GUI.exe': 'e:\winnt\assembly\gac\xassignment_3s_4_0.logger\1.1.
0.0__c5158ce0bd1c56b3\xassignment_3s_4_0.logger.dll' geladen, keine Symbole geladen.

-o-
 
M

Mike Wade [MSFT]

This is a known issue, which I found an answer to on a blog. It appears that there is a registry corruption
somewhere (specualted to be a problem with MSN Messeger 6.0). See the blog at:
http://weblogs.asp.net/alanshi/archive/2003/12/10/42690.aspx

To quote:

"If you encounter this problem, it is very likely that you have run into an odd MSI registry corruption (at the time of
this writing, the cause is unknown). Without getting into a long-winded explanation of how this registry corruption
eventually results in the error message above, the common cause of this is a bogus default value set under one
(or both) of the below registry keys:

[HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Installer\Assemblies\Global]

[HKLM\SOFTWARE\Classes\Installer\Assemblies\Global]

If these keys are not empty (e.g. they contain a MSI descriptor value), then you have hit this situation, and you
should be able to fix the problem by clearing the default value. I can't guarantee that this will always work, but it
has definitely been our experience that this is the most common source of this problem. "

--
Mike Wade, VB Team
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

--------------------
From: "Jan Kidrud" <[email protected]>
Subject: Pending MSI Reference When Uninstalling Assebly from the GAC
Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2004 16:28:49 +0100

Ones I install an assembly in the GAC, I'm unable to unstall it. This diables loading of debug symbols (pdb) of
Click to expand...
the assembly. This must be a well-known issue, but I didn't succeed in finding a description in the MS
knowledge base. Does anybody know a solution to this symptom?
 
J

Jan Kidrud

Yes, that's it: Clearing the default value in [HKLM\SOFTWARE\Classes\Installer\Assemblies\Global]was the remedy.

Thank you! This symptom spooked on my server for a long time...
Jan

Mike Wade said:
This is a known issue, which I found an answer to on a blog. It appears that there is a registry corruption
somewhere (specualted to be a problem with MSN Messeger 6.0). See the blog at:
http://weblogs.asp.net/alanshi/archive/2003/12/10/42690.aspx

To quote:

"If you encounter this problem, it is very likely that you have run into an odd MSI registry corruption (at the time of
this writing, the cause is unknown). Without getting into a long-winded explanation of how this registry corruption
eventually results in the error message above, the common cause of this is a bogus default value set under one
(or both) of the below registry keys:

[HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Installer\Assemblies\Global]

[HKLM\SOFTWARE\Classes\Installer\Assemblies\Global]

If these keys are not empty (e.g. they contain a MSI descriptor value), then you have hit this situation, and you
should be able to fix the problem by clearing the default value. I can't guarantee that this will always work, but it
has definitely been our experience that this is the most common source of this problem. "

--
Mike Wade, VB Team
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

--------------------
From: "Jan Kidrud" <[email protected]>
Subject: Pending MSI Reference When Uninstalling Assebly from the GAC
Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2004 16:28:49 +0100

Ones I install an assembly in the GAC, I'm unable to unstall it. This diables loading of debug symbols (pdb) of
Click to expand...
the assembly. This must be a well-known issue, but I didn't succeed in finding a description in the MS
knowledge base. Does anybody know a solution to this symptom?
An example follows.
1. uninstallation from GAC
E:\>gacutil -nologo -u xAssignment_3S_4_0.Logger
Assembly: xAssignment_3S_4_0.Logger, Version=1.1.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKey
Token=c5158ce0bd1c56b3, Custom=null
Unable to uninstall: assembly is required by one or more applications
Pending references:
SCHEME: <WINDOWS_INSTALLER> ID: <MSI> DESCRIPTION : <Windows Ins
taller>
Number of items uninstalled = 0
Number of failures = 0
E:\>
2. a message from VS .NET when loading debug symbols of the assembly
'Assignment_3S_4_0.GUI.exe': 'e:\winnt\assembly\gac\xassignment_3s_4_0.logger\1.1.
0.0__c5158ce0bd1c56b3\xassignment_3s_4_0.logger.dll' geladen, keine Symbole geladen.
-o-
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 

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