MSI-Based software package/hardware driver installation issues

(imported topic written by Syro91)

I’m having a problem deploying MSIs via bigfix. I’m not sure when this problem started but when we try to run many of our msi deployments now, we will see some odd behavior:

As expected, registry entries are made in hklm\software\microsoft\windows\currentversion\uninstall BUT nothing appears in add/remove programs

binaries are dropped into their expected location on the system, but (where configured) shortcuts are NOT placed into the All Users desktop or start menu.

When we try to deploy drivers, we can see that sometimes, the inf files are placed into the driver store, but the devices associated with those drivers will never be recognized.

No errors show in either windows event logs or bf client logs.

If we run the installs manually everything seems to work correctly.

We have seen this happening with Windows XP and Windows 7.

(imported comment written by MrFixit)

We saw something very similar and resolved the issue by installing .NET3.5 SP1 on the BES Servers. We also install on relays too but the only place it seemed to matter was on the BES Server.