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Are You 2896 Ready?

Here's something weird. I'm on Windows Vista again, and developing with VisualStudio 2005. I create my MSI several times each day and install it. But tonight on Vista, I got this weird error. What's worst is that I didn't discover this error until after I found a lame MSI hack from an MSDN blog.

So I am installing my MSI, and it gets to the very end and pops up an error message. The error code is 2896. That's all I got was that lame error code. 2896. Go to google and do a search on "windows vista error 2896." You'll find the blog that leads to a solution to decoding the error.

Turns out that this error message is really because the software I am installing is marked for deletion by Vista. Since I did not change the MSI version number, and did not change the product code, Vista thought it was installing the exact same product, which I had just uninstalled. Apparently the uninstallation process is queued, so you can't install and uninstall the same MSI repeatedly. It wasn't until after I rebooted Vista that I was able to install the MSI again. (Note, that after waiting for about 30 minutes, the MSI could be re-installed)

I would pay the Windows Vista Ultimate licensing price for a version of Vista that is tuned to developers. One that gives me access to things like this uninstall queue and the ability to shut off "virtual" registry support.

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