Known Causes for Freeze/Crash

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samba
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Unread post Sun Feb 08, 2009 4:04 pm

Hi,

I'm new to Mars Installer, and I really like what I see so far - except for one problem.

When I run it on my desktop, where I'm revising marsinst.ini, it runs fine. It should not find a CDROM drive since there are no discs in the drives, nor images mounted, containing 'WIN51' or any other file I specify in marsinst.ini.

When I run it in a Virtual Machine (via VirtualBox), where it should find the CDROM (it's mounted), it starts up, shows the main structure of the window (with no images or text loaded, just the background color), and hangs. I have a system monitor running that shows me that CPU usage is at 100% from the moment I start MarsInstaller. I also notice that the memory usage increases slowly (this is not surprising), but it stops increasing at the same time as everything else stops responding.

I have not tried the installation on a physical machine.

Is this a known problem? Do you need more information? Is there a solution handy?
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Marsianin
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Unread post Sun Feb 08, 2009 4:50 pm

samba wrote:When I run it on my desktop, where I'm revising marsinst.ini, it runs fine. It should not find a CDROM drive since there are no discs in the drives, nor images mounted, containing 'WIN51' or any other file I specify in marsinst.ini.
Actually you can comment this line and %CDROM% will be set to the first CD-ROM in the system without checking for any files.

What about hangs and freeze - I have no idea why this can happen. I tried to install Windows XP SP2/SP3, Windows XP x64 under VirtualBox (since v.1.6, now 2.1.2) and never had such problems with Mars Installer. marsinst.exe running from [GuiRunOnce] in WINNT.SIF.

Try to run it in debug mode, revise marsinst.log. Also you can post a part of your marsinst.ini file here. I think it's something on your side.
Is there any life on Mars ?
samba
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Unread post Sun Feb 08, 2009 5:56 pm

Marsianin,

Thank you for your prompt reply.

I'll try that method, commenting out the CDROM specification. For now, the INI I've been using is posted here: http://befreely.pastebin.com/m7075fe67

Right now I'm running RunOnceEx.cmd from cmdlines.txt, which adds 'marsinst.exe' to a RunOnce registry entry. My goal was to run Mars Installer from the CDROM, keeping all software installation sources on the CD - not moving them to the harddrive in $OEM$\$1 or similar.

Would you post an example for the GUIRunOnce method? I have not seen one yet that lets me run everything from the CDROM.

Thank you.
samba
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Unread post Sun Feb 08, 2009 9:32 pm

samba wrote:Marsianin,

I'll try that method, commenting out the CDROM specification. For now, the INI I've been using is posted here: http://befreely.pastebin.com/m7075fe67

Thank you.
I've made some changes, now testing this: http://befreely.pastebin.com/m149f71df
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Marsianin
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Unread post Mon Feb 09, 2009 2:51 am

samba wrote:Right now I'm running RunOnceEx.cmd from cmdlines.txt, which adds 'marsinst.exe' to a RunOnce registry entry. My goal was to run Mars Installer from the CDROM, keeping all software installation sources on the CD - not moving them to the harddrive in $OEM$\$1 or similar.
You can run it from any place, but if you running from CD you should find your CD-ROM drive to run marsinst.exe (as I understood you did it already and marsinst.exe runs). I'm copying marsinst.exe and .ini files into $OEM$

Your file looks good and should work but I will check it more carefully...

And just a note: Microsoft .NET Framework 3.x CONTAINS .NET Framework 2.0 so there is no need to install .NET 2.0 and then .NET 3.5
Is there any life on Mars ?
samba
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Unread post Mon Feb 09, 2009 8:14 pm

Marsianin,

I've tried with "vanilla" Windows XP Sp3 CD and I'm having somewhat better luck.

It loads up at the appropriate time (T-13 I guess), but it's running extremely slow.

Also, some of the software complains that there is not enough space to install. One reports that it did not get a value though, so I'm slightly confused. Do some installers require .Net to be installed first? Would I need to reboot after installing .Net and then run the rest of the installers after that?

I wonder if some of my trouble relates to running it from the CD - would you please post your GUIRunOnce implementation? I'd like to try running them from the internal drive, and then (optionally) deleting the source directory upon completion.
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Unread post Mon Feb 09, 2009 9:04 pm

samba wrote:It loads up at the appropriate time (T-13 I guess), but it's running extremely slow.
It cannot be a Mars Installer because it's does nothing, just loads, runs program (Windows API doing it) and waits until that program terminates.
samba wrote:Also, some of the software complains that there is not enough space to install. One reports that it did not get a value though, so I'm slightly confused. Do some installers require .Net to be installed first? Would I need to reboot after installing .Net and then run the rest of the installers after that?
I don't think somebode uses installers written on .NET. It's just a stupid idea. I think everything depends on each program you're trying to install. Hope you will find answers on www.msfn.org.
samba wrote:I wonder if some of my trouble relates to running it from the CD - would you please post your GUIRunOnce implementation? I'd like to try running them from the internal drive, and then (optionally) deleting the source directory upon completion.
I'm not sure about it, it must work from CD or any other location. My default marsinst.ini file and marsinst.exe is being copied to C:\Windows\Install by Windows installer (from $OEM$) and installs software from DVD.
Is there any life on Mars ?
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