The Infamous 2869 Error installing the SCSF

I've been through so much pain the past two days that it would be truly criminal if I didn't share this with any other poor souls that may be out there.

I've been trying to install the Smart Client Software Factory May 2007 Release on my Vista Ultimate Parallels image, and I have been banging my head against the wall for the past two days trying *every* single permutation of pre-requisites and installation steps to get the bloody thing to work. The basic problem is after following the instructions from the Cabpedia and Codeplex installation guides, when I got to installing the SCSF MSI it would get to the last step and give me the error message I would soon become all too familiar with:

"The installer has encountered an unexpected error installing this package. This may indicate a problem with this package. The error code is 2869."

It pains me to even have to relive it in this manner.

Most of the Google results for this error message indicate some issue with UAC and elevation of privileges in Vista, with all manner of workarounds to fix it. So I tried switching the UAC on, switching it off again, installing the MSIs using msiexec as Administrator, running msiexec as Administrator from a command prompt, as a batch file, and from the VS command prompt. Nothing. I tried uninstalling the GAX Extensions and the Toolkit, and retrying the installations with all the aforementioned options. After far too many reboots and freaking out that I'd screwed things up in my Group Policy with gpedit, I tried msiexec with full logging switched on. That then gave me a glimmer of hope as I proceeded to follow a whole new set of error messages up the garden path. Still nothing.

The light on the horizon came when I did an incremental install of the options that the SCSF installer gives you, trying to find the option that generates the error. I managed to install the SCSF source via the advanced installation options, and then YES I managed to actually get something running.

The SCSF source gets installed to 'C:\Projects\SCSF Source' where you can open the GuidancePackage solution. Right, now we're getting somewhere... At which stage I think to myself all it takes to get this stuff installed is to enable the 'Guidance Package Manager' package, right-click the SmartClientFactoryPackage and select 'Register Guidance Package' option, right?

WRONG!

I'm was about to cry at this stage and I started going over all the steps that I previously had, thinking that I'd missed out on some step somewhere. The frustration was palpable to say the least. I'm just trying to build the tension here because I don't want anyone else to get to the punchline without experiencing some of the pain I had to go through.

Still with me? Good.

Anyway the error I received from the Guidance Package Registration process was something along the lines of "Registration Failed" or some other totally useless message. After some more digging around I found out I could see the VS.Net output for the 'Guidance Package Development', where I finally found the gem I was looking for:

"The project factory VisualBasic is not registered"

It turns out this error indicates that I don't have Visual Basic installed as a VS.Net option.

HAZAAAAAAH!

So I finally managed to get VB.Net installed, crossed my fingers, and tried the SCSF install for the 30th time. Incredibly it actually succeeded, and I thought to myself, "Why is this not ********ing documented?!", and realised that no-one else should have to go through this pain. I'll post this to the Cabpedia and P&P guys so that hopefully they will update their install guides as well.

Anyway I've totally forgotten why I wanted the SCSF in the first place as my brain is still too sore, but hopefully it will come to me soon.

UPDATE: Turns out I wasn't the only one that encountered this one - they've subsequently released a patch for this issue:
http://blogs.msdn.com/blaine/archive/2007/06/07/scsf-installation-patch-available-for-c.aspx

The lovely new view from our office

This is the answer the government department Im working for has to our recent security problems. Seems more like they're trying to keep us in then keeping the bad guys out.

May be time to dig up that old 'whats your prison bitch name' internet quiz. Or at least we should be able to start demanding conjugal visits.

Night riding

Am I in some pain this morning or what?

In preparation for the 24 hour Moonride race in Rotorua this weekend, my teammates decided that it would possibly be a good idea for me to actually do one night ride before the race... So we decided to hit Makara Peak after work last night.

Well its an incredible experience, apart from the complete disorientation you feel trying to negotiate goat tracks above fairly steep cliffs with only one spotlight on your handlebar that never seems to light up the piece of track that you want to see. Suffice to say I did have a few little hiccups. The first one was coming down Missing Link, I just completely spazzed out and ended up going straight off the track on down the bank a few meters, yelping as I landed on the underbrush. Luckily Jono was there to help fish me and my bike out of the bush.

Then coming down Ridgeline, I managed to almost completely bail not once but twice. Both were incredibly gracefully handled (yeah right), by recovering from extreme endo's back into the classic holy-crap-how-did-I-survive-that position.

Good fun, but it has certainly humbled any preconceptions of any skill I thought I previously had.

Whats up with these redneck taxi drivers?

OK I know that I shouldn't be judging the US on the basis of the places in the States that I've visited (mostly just California and Nevada) but its really fun to be judgmental without looking at other people's perspectives. On that note....

Seriously where do these rednecks come from? Chris and I were in a cab from McCarran Airport into Las Vegas last week and I really don't know how the subject of assault rifles came up but it did. Chris has been known to dabble in the odd bit of gunplay so he did manage to join in somewhat in this conversation, but it turned out our cabbie was a fully paid up member of the Las Vegas Militia.

Oh. My. God.

This guy started ranting about his latest acquisitions: an M-52-blah-16-Super-Bang-Bang-Whatever. Apparently this thing can fire a bullet a mile and a half (is that a good thing?) and this fellow was preparing for when the 'race wars' started (again, WTF??) so he could sit on the roof of his house and shoot people that approached. And this guy was totally deadpan.

Was probably a good time to pay my fare and jump out of the cab.

And *then* catching a cab back to the airport at the end of the week I had a nice fellow who started telling me about the coronary bypass he had booked for the following week. I was beginning to feel sorry for the guy when he told me that when he found out the surgeon that was assigned to do the procedure on him was a 'foreigner', he subsequently refused to let this doctor perform this life saving operation on him. Apparently 'the Indians' have no value on human life (according to a History Channel programme he once saw). Until this man had an 'Merican willing to perform this operation on him, the cabbie would rather die.

Again, wow.

Suffice to say I'm pretty glad to be back in little ol' Wellington.

Welcome to the Head Sphere

Well it seems like an opportune time to start this ol' blogging thing. I've resisted the pressure for about as long as I could bear (ironically considering the number of *other* people I have conned into starting a blog). But I think there's probably enough interesting things going on in my life that I imagine other people may care to read.

Just to give you a quick intro, the things I imagine I'll probably rant about are the things that I really care about:
- technology (surprise, surprise),
- adventure sports (mountain biking, snowboarding other miscellany)
- wine, woman and song (the other main facet of my life at the moment)

My other objective is probably for my writing to be not too cheesy. Every time I write anything for public consumption I typically re-read it and grimace at the cheesiness of my writing. Well if blogs are anything, they're definitely self-indulgent, so I shouldn't worry too much.

So begins the Head Sphere...