Wix Bootstrapper will not update, Error 0x800705b4

Question

I have a Wix Bootstrapper which installs/updates a number of MSIs. The MSI runs and updates fine, and the Bootstrapper will run fine for an initial install. I attempted to test Updating with the Boostrapper, however, and every time it will not even launch, and spawn a large number of processes and Setup_XXXXXXXXXXXXX_Failed.txt files in the %Temp% folder. each of these failed.txt files contain the following at the end:

[3098:23F8][2014-06-10T11:03:00]e000: Error 0x800705b4: Failed to open parent pipe: \.\pipe\BurnPipe.{087217E1-A4F3-4951-8319-06031945DA08} [3098:23F8][2014-06-10T11:03:00]e000: Error 0x800705b4: Failed to connect to unelevated process. [3098:23F8][2014-06-10T11:03:00]e000: Error 0x800705b4: Failed to run per-machine mode

The numbers vary between files but the errors remain the same.

I am running this Bootstrapper Exe with various command line arguments to tell it what MSIs to install and to provide it with Install Location and various arguments for Custom Actions.

Answer 1

This was reported at http://wixtoolset.org/issues/3890/. I just recently fixed it, the next WiX build shouldn't spawn a large number of processes.

However, the underlying problem was that Burn was receiving a command line that CommandLineToArgvW couldn't parse. You need to make sure that all double quotes are properly escaped, and that when using double quotes for spaces that there is an even number of them.