Installation takes longer after upgrading to AI 22.8 (from 19.7)

[Zsolt Kollarits]

Dear Advanced Installer,

Let me send you few installation logfiles.

Scenario 1: Fast scenario:
Until our previous releases our TheServer.exe was installed usually in 2-3 minutes. We used AI version 19.7 for the previous releases.

Scenario 2: Slow scenario:
Nowadays we´ve found out, that installation time went up to 10 minutes or more. Same feature set is installed, almost identical .aip file, the major difference is that we started to use AI version 22.8.

Could you please check the logfiles and give us a hint why the install time is increased?

Best regards,
Zsolt

[Catalin]

Hello Zsolt,

I have checked our email and could not see any log files - could you please check this again to make sure the logs have been sent?

Just to make sure, please resend them so I can have a look.

This seems like quite a strange scenario, to be honest. Are you able to consistently reproduce this on more machines?

Not so long ago I investigated the prerequisite issue from your side and the installation definitely did not take that long, so I'm thinking perhaps this only happens in isolation.

Best regards,
Catalin

[Zsolt Kollarits]

Hi,

The logs are attached again!

Best regards,
Zsolt

[Catalin]

Hello Zsolt,

Although this started happening after the upgrade, I do not think the behavior is related to the upgrade.

In the log file, we can see the delay is not actually coming from any of our Custom Actions:

Code: Select all

Action start 12:40:26: AI_CleanPrereq.
MSI (c) (F0:68) [12:40:26:424]: Invoking remote custom action. DLL: C:\Users\TADEPL~1\AppData\Local\Temp\MSIB3E1.tmp, Entrypoint: CleanPrereq
Action ended 12:40:26: AI_CleanPrereq. Return value 1.
MSI (c) (F0:64) [12:47:10:947]: Destroying RemoteAPI object.
MSI (c) (F0:14) [12:47:10:947]: Custom Action Manager thread ending.

Our custom action, AI_CleanPrereq returns almost instantly. This Custom Action is executed via MSI’s Remote Custom Action Server (msiexec.exe spawned as a separate process).

The sequence would be:

- MSI launches the remote CA server

- CleanPrereq executes and returns immediately

- MSI waits for the remote CA process to terminate

- Something delays that termination

- MSI eventually cleans it up, 7 minutes later

This delay seems to be external to Advanced Installer logic (e.g. custom actions). These issues are usually hard for me to pinpoint exactly what causes them, so I can't say the reason. From what I can see, even in the "FAST" log file, there still is a 2 minutes delay before the last executed action and "Destroying RemoteAPI Object" line.

Is there some external factor here that you think might interfere with this - perhaps a AV product or something alike. If you test this on a clean VM (with a clean installed Windows), does the issue still reproduce?

Best regards,
Catalin