Archive: Common reasons for installer to fail to initialise?


Common reasons for installer to fail to initialise?
I have a user spamming me to death because he cannot run the installer for my program. A few hundred other people have run the same program without incident, so I think it is something specific to his setup. This is his error report:

Okay look: I'm on windows XP SP2. I have administrator rights. I am truing to strat the latest version of your mod. I have DL it from all the links, and extracted it via WinRAR or Windows's default zip extractor. When I try to run your installer the mouse cursor just shouws the hour glass for a very very brief moment and nothing happens. There is nothing apearing in the taks manager...I don't get any Error messages.
It sounds like the installer is not even initialising, as he would at least get an error message if it was running. Are there any common issues I can make him aware of, like some form of virus protection that prevents exe execution or unsigned programs from running?

Thanks.

Maybe it's a stupid question, but, is there code in .onInit function that verifies some condition and if the condition fails terminates the installer?


Actually, as it turns out, yes there was a problem with one of the .onInit functions. It referenced a registry key that not every user had, thus causing abort, but I have now found a workaround to avoid needing to use this key.

Most common reason for install failure: author error!


Most common reason for install failure: author error!
Well, my question wasn't stupid at all :)

I have common problem with installer initialization. My installer was compiled without any errors and successfully installed on couple of machines. But one computer still gives me system error messagebox (with yellow warning icon :)) and it reads "Program execution error".

I've checked installer.exe dependencies and all DLL's on my computer (successfull installation) are same as the ones on the "broken" machine.

Any ideas what could be wrong? Did anybody experience this?


Not invalid op code by any chance?

Stu