How do you turn on Logging/Log Files when installing an MSI? Oh yeah, /L or via the Registry…

Microsoft Deployment Technology - Windows Installer Engine

“…

Diagnostic logging

Windows Installer supports logging can be enabled in the following ways:

• Command-line: If installing an MSI package from the command-line, the /L switch can be used to enable logging. For example, the following command installs Package.msi and outputs verbose logging to c:\Package.log:

msiexec /i Package.msi /l*v c:\Package.log

• Windows Registry: The following registry value can be used to enable verbose logging:

Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Installer

Value Name: Logging

Type: REG_SZ

Data: voicewarmup

The resulting log is named MSI###.log (where "###" is a unique random identifier) and is placed in the user's Temp directory (the 'temp' directory location is per-user, and is pointed to by the environment variable %temp%).”

Logging of an MSI installing is one of those things I just don’t do enough to remember how to do it when I need too. I figure if I capture it here, there’s a higher chance that I’ll be able to find it in the future… ;)

One thing that was news to me was that you could turn on logging via the Registry (“voicewarmup”? lol). That seems like a useful hack for when installing MSI’s via double-clicking, etc.