Setup.exe

So I had to install this here application. Specifically, something called BroadVision Command Center, a front end to manage web content basically… though much more if used properly. Anyhow, every time I ran the Setup.exe file… nothing happened… Well after much searching and probing about into windows files I really had no right being in, I found the answer, and here it is…  

Symptoms:

Running a setup file yields nothing whatsoever, no splash screen, or drive access in the background. Checking in Task manager shows that setup.exe runs as does wowexec.exe but both show up with no CPU or Memory usage.

Background:

Wowexec.exe is the Windows process that allows older 16 bit applications run in the 32 bit environment (Windows 16 On Windows 32 EXECutable). So it would appear that the setup.exe file I was trying to run was a 16 bit application, well actually, the InstallShield exe file was, the application it was trying to install wasn’t.

Fix:

It seems that since Windows XP SP2, there have been some issues with a broken AUTOEXEC.NT file. A bit more investigation revealed the cause. Novell adds a couple of lines to this file to allow support for 16-bit DOS Applications, specifically:

%SystemRoot%\system32\vipx.exe
%SystemRoot%\system32\vlmsup.exe

You can read all about the reasons for this here. This was my issue, but there can be others, to fix this issue, the safest way is to rename your ‘C:\windows\system32\AUTOEXEC.NT’ file some thing like ‘old_AUTOEXEC.NT’, and copy ‘C:\windows\repair\autoexec.nt’ into ‘C:\windows\system32\’ to replace it. After reboot, the issues should be fixed. If there are any probems or it doesn’t resolve the probelm for some reason, simply delete the new file, and rename the old one back will restore your system to it’s previous state.

This fixes pretty much all issues with symptoms above, even if they’re not caused by Novell and/or an older 16 bit InstallShield file as mine was.

Hope this helps someone else out there.

M:)