Windows installer pops up option dialog

Software

When I was trying to install HTC sync in my windows xp sp3 system, the windows installer always popped up an dialog with following content inside:

Windows ® Installer. V 4.5.6001.22159

msiexec /Option [Optional Parameter]

Install Options
Installs or configures a product
/a
Administrative install - Installs a product on the network
/j
[/t
] [/g ]
Advertises a product - m to all users, u to current user

… …

[caption id=”attachment_120” align=”alignright” width=”150” caption=”windows installer options dialog”]windows installer options dialog[/caption]

Following steps regarding how to find the issue and how to fix it.

  1. run procexp
  2. run the installer
  3. after the dialog popped up, check the procexp and get the command line string, it is something like

MSIEXEC.EXE /i “C:\WINDOWS\Downloaded Installations{5B9EDFAD-5CFC-4B5B-938F-346D95FDE2E3}\HTC PC Suite.msi” /l*v+ B:\Local Settings\Temp_HTC_PCSuite.log TRANSFORMS=”B:\Local Settings\Temp{23B8F894-E5E8-4F0E-9932-C66B832DCDB3}\1033.MST” SETUPEXEDIR=”J:\download\software”

  1. check all of the paths in the string and make backup copy for every one.
  2. delete the parameters one by one to check which parameter causes the problem
    6 fix it

In the above command line, there is a space in the log path but it is not quoted. Modified the environment variable and run the installer again, the issue was gone.