When installing Measurement Studio 8.1 for VS2005 TARGETDIR is undefined

[schindler]

Hello,

I have VS2005 installed on my Windows Vista x86 (processors are 64 bit) and I am trying to install Measurement Studio 8.1.1.  I receive the following error:

TARGETDIR is undefined, the directory table seems malformed, Aborting...

I am trying to install from the installation CD I received last month in the mail.  How do I fix this?

Scott Schindler
scottschindler@kurz-instruments.com

[JonathanN]

Hi Scott,

I have seen this error before on Vista when you were trying to install an application without administrative rights.  Are you logged in as the administrator? Even if you are, could you try right-clicking on the setupVS2005.exe file and selecting Run as administrator?

Try that and let me know what happens.

Best Regards,

[schindler]

Hi Jonathan,

Thanks for the help.  I get the same error when run as administrator from the right click menu.

Scott Schindler

[JonathanN]

Hi Scott,

I'd be curious if this behavior is occurring on just this one PC or multiple machines. Have you or other co-workers seen this occur on multiple machines?

Do you have multiple hard drives installed on your system? If so, what drive are you attempting to install to?

Best Regards,

[JonathanN]

Hi Scott,

Another helpful test would be to try installing on a Windows XP machine. If it works, that would tell us there is some issue with the Vista OS (i.e. maybe some security settings or something). 

Another piece of information that helps is a log of the installer. The log should show why the installer is failing. See the Creating a Error Log File for a Software Installation KnowledgeBase for instructions on creating this log. Then post the log.

Thanks

Best Regards,

[schindler]

Hello Jonathan,

I tried installing it on my XP machine.  It had a previous version of Measurement Studio installed.  It installed but now I get the following error upon opening VS2005:

The National Instruments Measurement Studio Tools ({A932A819-D5D1-4C3C-AF08-322EC0B6A10D}) did not load because of previous errors. For assistance, contact the package vendor. To attempt to load this package again, type 'devenv /resetskippkgs' at the command prompt.

I have tried restarting but it did not fix this error.  I have attached the log file created while trying to install it on my Vista machine.  Of course it did not install.

Thanks for your help,

Scott Schindler

[JonathanN]

Hi Scott,

Thanks for posting the log file as it atleast gave us some idea of what is going on. Basically, our installer is trying to get the value of the "pub docs" location on the Windows Vista machine by using a standard Windows API call.  For some unknown reason, that call is failing and giving us a message stating "The system cannot find the file specified".

My guess of what the problem is that this setting in Vista is messed up, the folder is missing, or it has invalid permissions.  Several suggestions include:

1) Verify that this folder exists by trying to browse to it in Explorer; "C:\Users\Public\Documents" (it might be called "C:\Users\Public\Public Documents" in Explorer)
2) Try to create a new document or folder in this location, by right-clicking and doing New....
   
If 1 or 2 fail, then fixing this OS issue should allow the installer to work correctly. 

If those steps don't fail, we can offer another suggestion but we will wait on that.

Let me know what you find!

Best Regards,

[schindler]

I can only create a directory in the Public Documents directory.

Scott Schindler

[JonathanN]

Hi Scott,

So are you unable to create new files then? What error do you get? I would expect the error to be an OS error as to why you can't create files.

Best Regards,

[schindler]

When I right click in the public documents folder and choose new I only get the folder option.  I do not get the text file, etc., options.  I do not receive any errors.

Scott Schindler