The Case of the Hung Game Launcher

re: The Case of the Hung Game Launcher

JS2010 — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 18:02:24 GMT

I fixed 'regular user prompted to install a device driver' with procmon: social.technet.microsoft.com/.../3c90cad7-3729-49b6-8d16-a89fc7830702

re: The Case of the Hung Game Launcher

Milan Dindoš — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 08:40:09 GMT

I agree, it was a nice investigative job, you did .. I also agree, your sysint-tools are all AAA-class software, ... but I would simply wipe the buggy installer reg entry manually (or maybe using msicuu/msizap). - Then make a backup of my game files and the registry to preserve all game settings. - Then simply reinstall steam, and merged the registry back ... But who knows?

...a nice article. .. and we could simply call it: - "STEAMY WINDOWS"

re: The Case of the Hung Game Launcher

samavedam_vijay — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 15:01:15 GMT

Nice one there Mark! You must try to play their "Mafia wars" if you still haven't done so :)

Vijay

re: The Case of the Hung Game Launcher

rbabbit — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 21:32:57 GMT

Thanks for sharing Mark.. even though this one wasn't as complicated a mystery to solve compared to some of the other ones you've blogged about, I always enjoy how you tell the story

re: The Case of the Hung Game Launcher

JS2010 — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 15:05:22 GMT

How about going to a school and doing a case of the slow Windows 7 login?

re: The Case of the Hung Game Launcher

Fleet Command — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 22:32:23 GMT

Hmm... Some insight into Windows Installer-related issues... I must be careful not to commit this mistake myself in the future. Unfortunately, I am quite liable, because of a habit of mine: I maintain a local archive of all software that I download and install. (Of course, I no longer have Steam; I was not satisfied with it.)

Oh, and one thing about xcellentmind's comment: That was also my first impression; but soon I realized that the only thing that gave me this impression was the less-that-optimum choice of title. The title should have been "The Case of Misleading Installer Error", because that is indeed the area in which Process Monitor has shown its significance. Otherwise, as far as the hung game launcher is concerned, Mark, you just re-installed Steam and it is nothing brilliant.

re: The Case of the Hung Game Launcher

Brant Gurganus — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 14:37:07 GMT

This does illustrate a flaw in Steam in not storing a copy of its installer. This is a common occurence. Many of the cool self-repair features of Windows Installer rely on access to the MSI. This is why Office now installs a local cache of the MSI files, for example. One thing you can actually do is to install pointing to the MSI over HTTP instead of from the cache. That can be useful sometimes too.

re: The Case of the Hung Game Launcher

Mohitkapoor — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 17:08:59 GMT

One of the most pathetic post that we expected from you Mark.