I am creating a patch to hopefully workaround the hung wusa.exe. But since I cannot myself reproduce the problem, the patch is a blind shot. I could prepare a build of 6.3 pre-alpha MSI for you, if you’d consider testing the change, and also check that existing 6.3 installers also don’t work for you.
Looking at LO 6.3 overnight now. Do I need to install the .sdk?
Looking at LO 6.3 overnight now.
Great!
Do I need to install the .sdk?
No.
OK. This on literally clean MS built (an MS tech did this) from a downloaded current Win 8.1 install .iso.
It has had CCleaner installed to snapshot and timestamp the registry, but I cancelled any changes. I can roll the PC back by hand to exactly this point (made a tar image of whole partition via Ubuntu).
This is a fresh PC built on a wiped (destroyed partitions) SSD (it actually takes 5 minutes to install Windows onto SSD nowadays and MS gave good support throughout)
LO6.3 overnight of 23rd March installed (hooray!) but will not start:
“The program can’t start because api-ms-win-crt-runtime-l1-1-0.dll is missing from your computer. Try reinstalling the program to fix”
FYI Windows Update has completed OK and is up on this machine.
Well, progress…
Could you please mention the full name of the 6.3 package you used? I suspect that it was built without UCRT - which is unfortunate, because the whole point is testing UCRT installation
libo-master~2019-03-22_03.21.58_LibreOfficeDev_6.3.0.0.alpha0_Win_x86.msi
Yes, I checked myself, that the daily packages are indeed built without UCRT. That makes the testing you made useless - I’m sorry to not check that in advance before asking you to test. I’m building my own build now with UCRT and the patch.
https://cloud.mail.ru/public/DeaE%2FX1ui5nggE is a 64-bit installer. I’m in the process of building 32-bit.
Please read this first:
The change should fix 2 things: inability to cancel the installation, and infinite wait for the wusa.exe. Hopefully on this your system, wusa would also hang - which is essential for testing. We need to test this in steps:
- Uninstall existing LO 6.3.
- Please log both following install tests, using different log files.
- Test cancellation: start logged install; when you see “Installing KB2999226”, please Cancel it before 120-second interval elapses. That interval would activate workaround for hung wusa - so to test Cancel, we need to do that earlier. Please save logfile (hope it succeeds).
- Test wusa workaround: again, start logged install; and now wait until 120-second interval waiting for wusa elapsed. Then it should stop Windows Update - and the question is, would it proceed OK or with a warning.
Thank you for helping me!
Have DL’d the Dev version and ran it getting log file too. It tried to install KB2999226 but gave up, throwing warning 25000: installing a prerequisite KB2999226 failed.
Try installing another??
OK only just saw your installation instructions. Trying again…
Done the cancelled one OK; clean operation. Next allowed to proceeds and threw that 25000 warning: installing a prerequisite KB2999226 failed. Cancelling that warning, install continues and gives Install Wizard Completed OK. MSVCP140D.dll failure on trying to run 6.3 tho.
Want the logs?
Yes please!
Here you go, these are 4 I’ve done today. 3 is the cancelled one and 4 allowed to run through DL link
Thank you very much! That helps a lot.
The missing MSVCP140D.dll is expected - because that’s a build with debug version, which depends on debug libraries missing on your system. But since we tested installation, this is unimprotant.
You may now remove the alpha installs, and re-install a current version. When “hung”, please kill running wusa.exe, and it should continue. If you would be so kind to also log that process, I’d owe you much!
The saga continues…
Cleaned up by uninstalling. 1st attempted install of LO6.2.2.2_32bit fails, 2nd fails. Both rollback.
Did DiskClean including system files, blew away registry and loaded the copy made after Win 8.1. Full-off reboot.
3rd attempt of install succeeds! Waited for hang and killed the wusa process as suggested. Instal now continues
BUT the system cannot run LO as “The program can’t start because api-ms-win-crt-runtime-l1-1-0.dll is missing from your computer.”
logs at: logs link
And what if you manually install the update from https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2999226/update-for-universal-c-runtime-in-windows? Will it also hang? You may run the update manually using wusa.exe and view its own log using instructions from https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/934307/description-of-the-windows-update-standalone-installer-in-windows. Also running wusa.exe without parameters shows you its /log switch with examples; the generated logfile is something which should be viewed with event viewer, not a normal text file.
Finally got everything to work.
The manual install of KB2999226 starts a detect process for necessary other update DL’s which involves discovering what this PC needs and installing them (zero) which happens before the requested manual install. So, when starting KB2999226 by hand the detect and install job runs first and WU never completes.
How to manually install then? I had to:
- kill wusa.exe task
- set Windows Update to Never
- full shutdown (WIn8.1 will sort of hibernate if you let it; don’t want that) then boot
- now run the manual KB2999226 installer. Completes immediately and…
- LO now starts!
- reset Windows Update to something sensible.
From this I learn that starting Windows Update, by itself, can hang the PC forever. Any KB2999226 installer needs to not go via WU service as, alas, it is cursed.
Unfortunately, this didn’t clarify things
The “manual KB2999226 installer” is MSU file, which is associated with that wusa.exe - see relevant registry entries at HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.msu and HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Microsoft.System.Update.1\shell\open\command. If you launch it again, you may see a message box telling “it is already installed”, and in the task manager, the running wusa.exe; you even can see full command line used to launch it, if add relevant column to task manager. And that is exactly the same command line used by LO installer.
wusa.exe is “Windows Update Standalone Installer”; it internally uses Windows Update service anyway. If Windows Update is disabled, so that wusa cannot enable it even temporarily, it will fail. That is why LibreOffice installer makes sure to temporary enable WU service (but not start) if it’s disabled. Setting the service to “never start” is not disabling it; so wusa is free to start it when required… and it’s still unclear what happens.
Might it be that what is needed is simply stop the WU service (but keep it enabled) prior to installing the update? So that wusa would start it as required, and in this process, would behave somehow differently?
I cannot test, but I’ll change the patch now to also do that.