Problem building Wix Projects on Windows Server 2012 R2

FinalBuilder Discussion
1

We have several existing installer projects that build successfully on an existing build server running windows 7 Professional. We are in the process of creating a new build server running Windows 2012R2 and are experiencing some issues. 

Finalbuilder version is 7.0.0.3418
Wix Version is 3.9

Error output: 

light.exe : error LGHT0217: Error executing ICE action ‘ICE01’. The most common cause of this kind of ICE failure is an incorrectly registered scripting engine. See http://wix.sourceforge.net/faq.html#Error217 for details and how to solve this problem. The following string format was not expected by the external UI message logger: “The Windows Installer Service could not be accessed. This can occur if the Windows Installer is not correctly installed. Contact your support personnel for assistance.”.
[Snipped Repeated Error Message]

These projects all build successfully when run in Visual Studio.
The user that builds these projects is an administrator.
General research has revealed that this is probably related to permissions of a service running in non-interactive mode, but no real solutions.
Running the projects without ICE Verification is not an option.

Thanks for any help.

- jp
2

Hi JP,

Apologies but we don’t have any direct experience with this error. It appears light is having troubles with its ICE validation. After a quick search I found the following post on stack overflow.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1064580/wix-3-0-throws-error-217-while-being-executed-by-continuous-integration

One of the areas to look at would be the post that talks about PEB. It might be too large.

“It’s not a concurrency issue as suggested in various threads. It’s caused by a too large Process Environment Block (PEB).”

3

I did see the solution you referenced above. My concern in this case is twofold:

1. We have an existing server running an older operating system (Windows 7 Professional) with identical environment variables that is able to execute these scripts successfully.
2. The poster explicitly notes that these issues are limited to “older” operating systems like XP and 2003. Further, when I look at the size of my current PEB using “set > environment.txt”, my the resulting file is only 8kb, well under the 32kb “limit” implied in the post.

thanks,
- jp

4

Problem Solved!

For Windows Server 2012 turning off UAC does not actually disable UAC for non-interactive processes.

Following these instructions: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/13953.windows-server-2012-deactivating-uac.aspx actually deactivates UAC, and ICE verification works.

- jp

5

Hi JP,

Sounds like there is an issue between the new operating environment and light.

Sorry we haven’t been of more help. We don’t have the depth of experience with Wix and light that is required to resolve this scenario. Maybe reaching out stack overflow, or on a Wix forum might catch the attention of people with experience with this error.