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Troubleshooting MSI Error 1720

Troubleshooting MSI Error 1720
Filed under: Wise Package Studio Troubleshooting, Packaging
Submitted by R-Vijay on 3 December, 2007 - 12:02.

Error 1720 is a generic Windows Installer error message which you get when there is a problem with a custom action script in the package.

To troubleshoot this error:

  1. Finish the install and look in the application log in the eventviewer. The eventviewer will have a warning with a source of MsiInstaller. This warning will often show you exactly where in the VBscript the error is.
  2. Log the MSI installer. You can activate logging with the following command line misexec /i pathtomsi.msi /L*v "pathtologfile.log". The log file will be created and added to as the install takes place. When the error occurs leave the error dialog on the screen and look at the log file. The end of the log file will contain the exact action that has caused the error. Look at the last MSI action to run without ending. This will be the action that is causing the problem. Often you can find this action in the CustomAction table (use Orca to open it up) and can fix any syntax errors or even hack the action out of the CustomAction and InstallExecuteSequence tables.
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Mitigating MSI error 1720

Submitted by R-Vijay on 7 December, 2007 - 04:58.

Check this KB article to understand the mitigation techniques for this error.

https://kb.altiris.com/article.asp?article=1561&p=...

Hope its useful for all.

Cheers'
Viju

Be careful with placement of custom actions in scripts

Submitted by augustal on 28 July, 2008 - 20:52.

I inadvertantly created a custom action loop that effectively stopped me from being able to uninstall an application, because I put the action in the wrong place. Updating the cache with a corrected msi didn't work either.

I kept getting this error message, and tried logging, but it didn't help me fix the installation. It did, however, give me the info I needed to uninstall the messy application.

The log highlighted the product Installer GUID (A Brief Note on Installer GUIDs) and the associated msi: from there I could find and remove the cached files from the C:\Windows\Installer directory - which finally allowed me to uninstall the application through Add/Remove programs. A much better alternative to scouring the registry!