Windows 8 and AppFabric Installation Pain

I’m getting a sense of déjà vu, I’ve just built a new Windows 8 virtual machine and spent a couple of hours fighting with the Windows Server AppFabric 1.1 install. I’m pretty sure this is at least the second time I’ve been on this merry dance so I’ll document it this time.

So let’s start of with a quick summary of the problem and solution: when attempting to install Windows Server AppFabric 1.1 (service hosting) on Windows 8 the installer fails with a MSI 1603 error. Searching the web for this error suggests the following:

1. Check the PSModulePath environment variable to ensure it is not corrupted, e.g. has a stray “ character in it. http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/vstudio/en-US/561f3ad4-14ef-4d26-b79a-bef8e1376d64/msi-error-1603-installing-appfabric-11-win7-x64

2. Add C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0 to the PSModulePath

These two approaches didn’t resolve my install issues so I dug through the installer logs, more on that shortly. Cutting to the chase I needed to perform the following steps:

1. Check the local machine security groups and remove the AS_Administrators or AS_Observers groups if they had been left behind from a previous failed AppFabric installation attempt.

2. Ensure that the Windows Process Activation Service as well as WCF activation options have been installed.

 

Diagnosis Walkthrough…

The path to enlightenment was not straight and started with the logging created by the installation process, found in C:\Users\Stef Sewell\AppData\Local\Temp.

Three log files and an error log was produced for each failed install attempt. The most interesting files are the AppServerSetup1_1_CustomActions(…).log as they contained the various errors.

The earliest log file listed the following failure:

19/07/2013 9:19:06 p.m. EXEPATH=c:\Windows\system32\\icacls.exe PARAMS=c:\Windows\SysWOW64\\inetsrv\config /grant AS_Observers:(OI)(CI)(R) LOGFILE=C:\Users\Stef\AppData\Local\Temp\AppServerSetup1_1_CustomActions(2013-07-19 21-18-47).log
Error: c:\Windows\SysWOW64\\inetsrv\config: The system cannot find the file specified.
Output: Successfully processed 0 files; Failed processing 1 files
ExitCode=2

Seeing this error, I added in the missing folder config folder to C:\Windows\SysWOW64\inetsrv  but then I got the following error on the next attempt:

20/07/2013 6:49:09 p.m. EXEPATH=C:\Windows\system32\\net.exe PARAMS=localgroup AS_Observers /comment:”Members of this group can observe AppFabric.” /add LOGFILE=C:\Users\Stef\AppData\Local\Temp\AppServerSetup1_1_CustomActions(2013-07-20 18-48-50).log
Error: System error 1379 has occurred.
Error: The specified local group already exists.
ExitCode=2

Looking the in local groups on the machine, I could see the AS_Observers group was present and had not been removed by the previous failed install. I removed the group. Re-running the installer and I now get:

20/07/2013 7:09:38 p.m. EXEPATH=C:\Program Files\AppFabric 1.1 for Windows Server\ase40gc.exe PARAMS=/i administration LOGFILE=C:\Users\Stef\AppData\Local\Temp\AppServerSetup1_1_CustomActions(2013-07-20 19-09-23).log
Output: Microsoft (R) AppFabric 1.1 for Windows Server Setup Utility. Version 1.1.2106.32
Output: Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Output: Workstation [Version 6.2.9200]
Output: OS Edition 0x30: Professional
Output: Load XML resource: (id=101, size=2868)
Output: Load XML resource: (id=101, size=2868)
Output: Load XML resource: (id=102, size=8696)
Output: Load XML resource: (id=102, size=8696)
Output: Load XML resource: (id=103, size=511)
Output: Load XML resource: (id=104, size=546)
Output: Load XML resource: (id=105, size=6759)
Output: Load XML resource: (id=103, size=511)
Output: [ServicingContext]
Output: INSTALLER_WINNING_COMPONENT_IDENTITY=
Output: INSTALLER_WINNING_COMPONENT_PAYLOAD=
Output: INSTALLER_WINNING_COMPONENT_MANIFEST=
Output: INSTALLER_WINNING_COMPONENT_VERSION=
Output: INSTALLER_SHADOWED_COMPONENT_IDENTITY=
Output: INSTALLER_SHADOWED_COMPONENT_PAYLOAD=
Output: INSTALLER_SHADOWED_COMPONENT_MANIFEST=
Output: INSTALLER_SHADOWED_COMPONENT_VERSION=
Output: Servicing type is None.
Output: [RunInstaller]
Output: Attempt 1 of 3: SuppressErrors=False
Output: [Initialize]
Output: Info: Initializing for update to administration.config…
Output: Installer ERROR: 0x80040154 Class not registered
Output: (Waiting 5 seconds)
Output: Attempt 2 of 3: SuppressErrors=False
Output: [Initialize]
Output: Info: Initializing for update to administration.config…
Output: Installer ERROR: 0x80040154 Class not registered
Output: (Waiting 10 seconds)
Output: Attempt 3 of 3: SuppressErrors=False
Output: [Initialize]
Output: Info: Initializing for update to administration.config…
Output: Installer ERROR: 0x80040154 Class not registered
Output: ERROR: _com_error: 0x80040154
Output: Exit code: 0x80040154 Class not registered
ExitCode=-2147221164

Three attempts to perform the step involving as40gc.exe failed so back to scouring the web, which turned up http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15415616/how-can-i-get-microsofts-appfabric-1-1-installed-on-windows-server-2012-os

Now I was getting somewhere, I was missing certain Windows features, in particular the Windows Process Activation Service and the WCF HTTP and non-HTTP activation features. Unfortunately the PowerShell servermanager module is not available on Windows 8 so I installed them via the ‘Program and Features’ control panel.

With these features in place, the AppFabric installer was successful. It was at this point I vaguely remembered I’d been through this process 6 months ago when I last set-up a fresh Windows 8 VM, now it’s written up for next time.