MSI fails to install with BigFix as SYSTEM, runs fine with interactive admin

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I have run into an issue with a couple of MSI files where they will not install correctly using BigFix but executing the exact same bat file as an interactively logged on admin user the install works fine.

The log file for msiexec even says the installation completed successfully but the application did not truly install.
When the install “fails” I see these lines below for basically every file from the install in the log file whereas running it manually (same command line) they do not show up.

SECREPAIR: Failed to open the file:C:\Source\GlobalSearch\Common\Square9\GetSmart\Processing\Provider Engines\RecoStar Full Page Reader\5.0\Bin\ImageProcess2\u.txt for computing its hash. Error:3

This doesn’t appear to occur with all the MSI files we deploy but with this app it will never work when executed by the BES client - only executed by an interactive administrator. Tested on Windows 7 and Windows 10 clients same results.

Any ideas what can be causing this?

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That is strange, and definitely seems like it could be a flaw with the MSI itself.

What happens if you open a CMD prompt as SYSTEM with PSExec and then run the MSI there, interactively, but as the SYSTEM account? Do you get the same problem?

There are some options for running things with BigFix in different ways, and not just by using PSExec, though that is also one of them: https://developer.bigfix.com/action-script/reference/execution/override.html

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I am going to try that and will report back. Thanks.

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Using PSEXEC the installation completes successfully. Would the next step be to try the override option asadmin=interactive?

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What options did you use for PSExec? It has a lot of different capabilities.

If you just used PSExec to run something as the SYSTEM account, and then the install worked, then that is kind of odd since that shouldn’t be that different from how BigFix does it in the first place. The only difference should be that it was SYSTEM but interactive.

There should be a combination of override options that would get this to work, but some of them either require a user to be logged in to use that user’s session, or they require that you specify a user account and password to be used on the system to do the install within. (the password is encrypted)

I’m not sure if we currently have an override option to run something as SYSTEM interactive or similar, so it might actually be easiest to run the installer using PSExec.

I really need to talk with our platform team to get a better idea of all of the different ways in which you can run things using the Override command and how they all work because I’m not as familiar with them as I’d like, but it sounds like what this MSI requires is actually something easier to do than what the override commands are meant to provide.

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The other big difference between psexec and besclient is that besclient’s in 32-bit mode.

Do you have action uses wow64 redirection false in your actionscript?

I’ve had a couple of installers (Java for instance) that cache things into the user profile, in directories that don’t exist for the SYSTEM account in 32-bit mode.

Try using psexec to launch \windows\syswow\cmd.exe and then see whether the installer runs ok from there.

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yes, that is a good thing to try for sure.