Well, today I had the pleasure of installing some software on my windows installation… apt-get install application? No, sorry, please jump through the hoops, dance with the fire and basically waste your time!
With the objective of installing the preview release of Liquid XML Studio, a free xml editor, the crusade was started.
XML Studio requires the .Net Framework 1.1 that was not installed on my machine – although I do have .Net 2.0 and .Net 3.0 btw. So, over to the microsoft download pages I went and downloaded the corresponding dotnetfx.exe setup file.
Enter the installation process…
Execute dotnetfx.exe and hope for the best. Well, no luck. The installer complained about “Fehler beim Initialisieren des Windows Installers” i. e. “Error initialising windows installer”. No detailed error message, not even an ununderstandable and microsoftonian encrypted error code like 0x652. Arghh…
Enter the google oracle…
Asking google for the german error message gave some results regarding wine and the installation of the .Net framework herein but no useful clue about anything for Windows XP. Microsoft’s knowledge base was clueless as well!
Then, how about some rough translation of the error message to English? Voila, after some fruitless searching and clicking this and that here we go: Error 1935 During Install of the .Net Framework.
Enter the solution …
Well, I did’t see error 1935 but nevertheless, basically the Msi-Installer locks some core dll-file required for the installation process for 10 minutes via the windows installer whenever so called assemblies – whatever these are – are installed.
What kind of idea is that? Is there any reason to prevent any further installation of .Net software for 10 minutes?? If there is, it probably is a very very dumb one!
Resolution: restart your computer (this always seems to be an option for problem solving proposed by Microsoft) or the power of kill. As any existing instance of the msi installer blocks the core dll mentioned above open the process tab in the task manager and kill all msiexec.exe tasks. Done.
Btw:
- MS does not give any detailed information whether this bug will ever be solved. Probably not.
- Nor is there any detailed explanation about the reason for such a dump implementation available.
That’s why I love the open source community. At least, errors are diskussed and explained in the various bugtrackers in detail.