You download and install one of our products, but the installation does not complete successfully. You get an error code, and are not sure what is causing the installation to fail.
This article details all of the methods that our installation programs make available for you to either troubleshoot the installation problem yourself, or to send logs to support for help in resolving the issue.
If something goes wrong with the installation of one of our products, a lot of logging is produced to help find out what went wrong. Check the logs in this order (see details on each log in sections below):
Once you have found the error that is being encountered, you can refer to the Setup Errors knowledgebase article, referenced below, for detailed descriptions and resolutions for errors that you may encounter.
The MessageMaster and EventMaster Server installation programs create a comprehensive XML log file when they encounter problems. You can click [View Log File] on the last page of the setup wizard to view this log file. If you missed the button, you can find the XML log file under c:\Program Files\Objective Software\Log\ObjSoftLog.xml. When available, this log will be your best source of information on what went wrong.
Some of the installation programs create detailed log files under c:\Program Files\Objective Software\Setup\Logs. You can look through all of them to see how the entire installation went, or you can sort them by date, and look at the last one - it is the one that most likely contains the problem that was encountered. It will also give you a very good idea of what it was trying to do when the problem occurred.
Depending on the problem, Windows may also log an error to the Application Event Log so it doesn't hurt to take a look there to find out if something is happening with the OS that may be causing the installation to fail.
Our self-extracting installation programs are compressed with Winzip, and use Windows Installer to perform the installation. The first thing to do before you can launch an MSI directly, is to use WinZip to extract the files into a directory.
Note: The MSI must be extracted to a local drive such as C: drive. It may not work if you try to run it from a network drive, or from a 'Compressed (zipped) folder'.
Run the MSI from a command line, adding a parameter to instruct Windows Installer to create a log file, and then examine the log file to determine what is going wrong. Be sure to use the correct path for the .msi file.
msiexec /i C:\MessageMasterServer.msi /l*v C:\MMSLog.txt
When searching an MSI log file for the error that caused it to fail, it helps to search for the string "Return value". Return value of 1 is ok, and you'll see a lot of them in the log file. But the first one that you find that is a 2 or a 3, is the one that caused the problem. Read the log entries immediately above that entry to find out what caused the abnormal return value. If it references a CustomAction, look for an additional detailed log file produced by the setup program itself (see 'Detailed Setup Logs' above).
You can use the above logs to try to troubleshoot the problem yourself, or you can collect the logs, and send them to support for analysis. Warning: the ObjSoft username and password may be present in the MSI log file - you may want to replace it with XXXXXXXX before you send it to support.