3rd party web app can't install correctly (windows 2003 sp1)

The setup for a 3rd part web app seems to fail when trying to create vitrual
directories. The setup asks for the website, which has to be created before
hand. It manages to copy all the files to the correct location but just halts
with no error messages at the end. We're installing this under a local admin
account and managed to get a successful install on another server.

I imagine the setup program is not that complicated and is trying too use
either adsutil.vbs or iisvdir.vbs. By the way, the setup is an EXE not an
MSI.

Does anyone know if there is some kind of security patch or policy I should
be watching for?

Is there something in Windows 2003 I can turn on to get better logging?
Nothing shows up in the even viewer.

On Jan 21, 9:32 am, softengine <softeng... RemoveThis @discussions.microsoft.com>
wrote:
> The setup for a 3rd part web app seems to fail when trying to create vitrual
> directories. The setup asks for the website, which has to be created before
> hand. It manages to copy all the files to the correct location but just halts
> with no error messages at the end. We're installing this under a local admin
> account and managed to get a successful install on another server.
>
> I imagine the setup program is not that complicated and is trying too use
> either adsutil.vbs or iisvdir.vbs. By the way, the setup is an EXE not an
> MSI.
>
> Does anyone know if there is some kind of security patch or policy I should
> be watching for?
>
> Is there something in Windows 2003 I can turn on to get better logging?
> Nothing shows up in the even viewer.



You should contact the support personel of the 3rd party web app to
make sure it supports Windows Server 2003 and for them to tell you how
to turn on their logging (if it exists). They are supposed to tell you
all this information; you are not supposed to be guessing.

Turning on "better logging" in Windows Server 2003 is simply your
attempt to cover for poor logging by the 3rd party web app setup. You
are guessing at the problem (since there's no web app setup log), so
you want to cast a wide net within Windows to see what is generically
changing at the registry, filesystem, metabase, etc with tools from
sysinternals.com. FYI: you may get innundated with the details of such
a wide net, and sometimes you may see expected "errors" within such
detailed logging that have no connection to your issue. It is always
easier for the web app setup to tell you "I tried to call X API and it
returned error code Y" because that immediately narrows down your
scope.

Now, if the setup was MSI, there is a lot of logging for free, but
alas, this web app setup did not take advantage of it.

Expecting setup errors to be in the event log is not a scalable
approach. Setup is run interactively, so there is little need to log
it... unless the app is enterprise-minded, where logging creates a
useful (but sometimes confusing) paper-trail.


//David
http://w3-4u.blogspot.com
http://blogs.msdn.com/David.Wang
//