MASM32 V9 install failed on Windows Server 2003

[shucho]

i've just insalled MS Visual Studio. Then i run the MASM32 installation program, the Visual Studio Just-in-Time Debugger reported an error. it looks like:

An unhandled win32 exception occurred in finst.exe [2832].

Maybe the exception caused the installation program cannot work on my computer  :(

And, when i manually extracted the file to C:\masm32, then run makelibs.bat, another exception occurred, as reported by Visual Studio JIT Debugger:

An unhandled win32 exception occurred in inc2l.exe [1804].

any solution?

[hutch--]

shucho,

There is something radically wrong with your OS installation if these things are happening. The installations have worked on hundreds of thousands of computers including a large number of 2003 machines. A fundamental of an installation of this type is the capacity to be able to write files to disk using published system API functions, if this cannot be done you need to fix your OS.

Your problems still sound like path errors from some form of path remapping. I would take a good look at how your drives are installed on your OS because the installation is designed to be run on a valid disk partition and nothing else.

[shucho]

hi hutch,

I setup only one primary partition on my OS. So there's only a C: driver displayed in windows explorer. And I am sure that I login as Administrator, and Administrator/Administrator usr/group has full control/permission w/ the C:\masm32 directory.

it's really weird.  :(

Maybe i have to switch back to my old Windows 2000.  :(

[Mark Jones]

Hello Shucho, perhaps try:  http://www.safer-networking.org/

[shucho]

hi Mark,

I just tried the software you mentioned above. It found a few cookies.

Then i re-installed the MASM32, it still cannot work.  :(

Anyway, thank you for your comments :wink

[shucho]

hi,

can anybody here give me a copy of your installation on "Microsoft Windows  Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition w/ Service Pack 1." ?

Maybe this way can help

TIA

[hutch--]

shucho,

I would be inclined to do a complete re-installation which allows you to set the machine up in a lot more professional manner. Unless you have a very small hard disk, partition the disk drive into 1 primary partition and a number of other secondary partitions then format them as NTFS drives making sure you don't use ANY dynamic disks, drive remapping or any of the other stuff.

Use a normal ADMIN profile to set up any software and if you need it, set up any other user profiles you may require and you should be able to install anything you like. As usual make sure you have no trojans, adware and the like to mess up your machine as they can have unknown consequences that prevent normal operation of many things.

If you have access at Acronis or Norton Ghost disk imaging software, once you get the machine set up and running reliably, make a disk image of your boot drive and store it on one of the tail end partitions so that if something meses your computer up, you can just restore the drive instaed of having to try and re-install it again.

[shucho]

Now, I am using MASM v9 w/ Windows XP.  It works well.

Thank you all :U

[Wheet]

I also ran into this problem on Windows Server 2003, so I did a little bit of debugging to find out that the cause is software-enforced Data Execution Prevention (DEP). If you use an unzip program to extract the install.exe you would be able to run the makelib without failure by adding inc2l.exe to the DEP exception list in sysdm.cpl > Advanced > Performance Settings > Data Execution Prevention.

[hutch--]

Wheet,

Thanks very much for your help here, I develop on win2k sp4 so I have no way of testing these problems. The archive is linked into the installation as an object module which is then written to disk and then run to expand it in place before the libraries are built. Now what I don't undrstand is the effects of DEP with the utility inc2lib.exe as it effectively builds a set of seperate DLLs with empty procedures just to get the import libraries from the DLL build then it deletes each DLL as the lib is produced.

What I don't know here is where data is being run as code.

[Wheet]

My drwtsn32 crash logs for inc2l.exe and finst.exe have been posted here:

http://wspe.net/masmcrash/

Hopefully this will be of assistance hutch, I can provide you further assistance if required.

[hutch--]

After having a good read of DEP from Microsoft, the problem appears to track down to the "finst.exe" file which is a 7zip SFX archive. It is written to disk, verified as written then run as a seperate process while the installer is disabled.

It is probably the case the "inc2l.exe" faults because soemthing it should have access at is not written when "finst.exe" is running as it does not try to run any data as code. The install.exe does not run data as code either.

I am none the wiser at the moment unfortunately.

[Mark Jones]

Since both crash on a simple PUSH instruction, perhaps the issue involves the stack or stack frame?

I might be wrong on this, but doesn't DEP pop up a warning message rather than terminate with a page fault?

[Shantanu Gadgil]

Time to move to NSIS install?!?  :bdg :bdg :bdg  :green2 :green2

Cheers,
Shantanu

[hutch--]

I wondered how long it would take for the suggestion to come up. I have always attempted to be gracious about my comments but with the broken record effort on NSIS, I guess its time to shut it up forever.

If I wanted a commercial installation, I would use Microsoft MSI, or any of the big professional installation packages but I will never use amateurish looking imitations of old style commercial installs. Nor am I even vaguely interested in anything licenced in that manner as the masm32 Project is not beholding to anything and I see the NSIS install as amateurish junk.

Having remembered when I did the installation for masm32 8.2 when I heard this crap over and over again, the problem back then was a defect in Winrar so after tracking it down with the help of some of our members, I opted for the 7zip archiving system which also delivered higher compresion.

I wonder what it takes to connect that I will never use crap like NSIS and if I had to I would use MSI instead.