Sometimes you may encounter the problem of unnecessary repairs of MSI while launching the shortcut in the same logged in user. Here is the way to troubleshoot this problem.

You can go to eventviewr (by typing eventvwr in Run command) then to applications and check the latest error message after repair. It will tell you which component is missing and because of which MSI went for self heal.

You can now check out this component in your package and see what the problem is. Maybe your keypath is a moving target for that component.

Just a heads up... After installing R8 for Notification Server all seemed to go well, but after one day the console threw an error every time we opened it stating it couldn't connect to the database, and when you ran nssetup it failed.

Turns out the coresettings.config file gets corrupted after install (sometimes...most times) so you need to run a repair on the NS and the service pack.

If you have a good copy of your coresettings.config you can also just replace the corrupted one but I recommend pausing the NS or at least stopping the services before you do this.

How would you be able to register EXE files in your MSI installation? This tech tip will show you how to do so.

By design, Microsoft Windows Installer does not self register .exe files. However, Wise has added a feature that uses a custom action to register files using custom code.

1. On the Files page of the Installation Expert, double-click on the file to bring up the details.
2. In the Registration tab, in the Registration Method drop list, select Use Order Specified below, click the file name, and click OK. The ordered registration places a custom action into the script that is necessary for the .exe to get registered.

Or you can create your own custom action in the MSI Script, that calls the regsvr32.exe and registers the .exe. This custom...

Using Terminal Services client to connect to the NS Server, we need to add the "/console" command line switch to prevent installation failures. No surprise there!

But I had some issues while with a customer (corrupt installation or strange behavior...), so I took a few minutes to make sure it wasn't 'my fault'.

I checked the server Terminal Services Manager Session ID, which should be 0 (zero) when connected in Console, and it wasn't!

Click to view.

Then I did

Start
Run
mstsc/?

and...
As I'm running Vista, the /console is /admin

Thanks MSFT,
Nice try to confuse me ;o)