Software Deployment

There's no realistic way anyone can help you without much more information. Enable MSI logging on a target workstation by pasting the text below into a .REG file and importing it with RegEdit:

[font="courier new"]REGEDIT4

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Installer]
"Logging"="voicewarmup"

Once activated this policy will produce log files, prefixed with 'MSI' followed by 4-6 random alphanumeric characters and with a .LOG extension in %SystemRoot%\TEMP. Note that *all* MSI activity is logged, including advertising so may want to turn it off once you're done.

Since the log files have meaningless names, use your favourite Search tool to locate the one for your product. I normally search for the MSI name in a DOS prompt using FIND - it's simple and quick:

FIND /C /I "[name_of_MSI]" MSI*.log

Once located, open the log in your favourite text editor and then find the text 'Return value 3.' (without the quote) as this is the value returned by almost all error conditions. Post the dozen or so lines above and below that entry and we'l try and determine what's happened.

You may also need to look at the setup.log file (if you haven't already) which by default will be created in the same folder as the uninstall response file you created. This is especially true if an MSI log file doesn't seem to be created (implying the uninstallation has failed before Windows Installer ever got going).

Note also that if you are hosting setup.exe, and response file from a server location on a mapped drive (rather than a local drive) then remember that the special SMS installation account used for uninstallation may not necessarily have access to the server location via a mapped drive.

On a final point (and this is purely a personal preference) after recording the silent uninstall response file, I generally rename the uninstall response file to (say) uninstall.iss and then use the /f1 qualifier to specify this alternate response file name. Doing this can avoid any confusion between silent installation response files and silent uninstallation response files.

Regards,

Spartacus

Try using the -SMS switch, this will keep the command from closing until the setup is complete.