Visual Studio 2010: Windows Installer using msiexec.exe returns MSI Error 2727

Question

I've got a Visual Studio Setup Project that uses the msiexec.exe file to create an Uninstall item as outlined in >> THIS << article on SO.

The Installer does not run.

When I launch the installer by double-clicking the setup.exe file, the "Please wait while setup launches" screen barely blips on the screen before I am confronted with my error.

The Text is (for search functions):

The installer has encountered an unexpected error installing this package. This may indicate a problem with this package. The error code is 2727.

I have found a set of MSI Error Codes, and Error Code 2727 translates to

The directory entry '[2]' does not exist in the Directory table.

Could someone guide me towards fixing this? What should I do?

[UPDATE]

At the suggestion of Cosmin Pirvu, I have created an error log for my installer. After looking it over, it appears my installation error could be the result of having a link to the Not Installed file msiexec.exe that I use in conjunction with my Project's [ProductCode] to create an Uninstall link.

The log file shown below appears to indicate that my installation fails when the installer attempts to create a temporary file for msiexec.exe, then it has another failure when it tries to display the Error Icon.

The file >> install.log on Google Sites << is my Error Log file's output (Hint: just do a search for Return value 3 to get to the errors).

[UPDATE 2]

I have an Uninstall link in the setup project that links back to the batch file uninstall.bat in my main project:

@echo off
%windir%\system32\msiexec.exe /x %1

The Arguments to the Uninstall link is only [ProductCode], since the /x switch is hard coded into the batch file.

[Solution]:

The Visual Studio Installer was not creating a folder that had some required DLLs in it.

Answer 1

The first step should be creating an installation log to see what triggers the error.

From the log you posted, it seems like your MSI tries to use a directory which is not in Directory table. Are you using any merge modules or special custom actions? If so, try to determine if they try to use a directory from your package.

You mentioned something about an uninstall shortcut. Can you give us more details?

Answer 2

Old question, I know - just wanted to add in some information that helped me with the Windows Installer project in Visual Studio 2015, in case anyone comes across this topic.

I got the same error message, 2727. My issue was that I was including my source code into an "src" folder in the installation directory. When looking at the output files for the source, I noticed several files like this:

\obj\Release\\TemporaryGeneratedFile_5937a670-0e60-4077-877b-f7221da3dda1.cs

Yes, it included that extra slash after Release. I had to add an exclusion (right click Source Files output -> ExcludeFilter) to exclude these files from installing. I added "*Temporary*" to exclude only these files.

Maybe someone else can explain why these temporary files were generated, all I know is that this fixed the issue. Hopefully this will help someone else looking for this topic.

Answer 3

I know its a Old question, but like @Riccaforte I was having some trouble to fix this in Visual Studio 2015. What I did was just delete all my Source Files inside my Aplication Folder, and I don't know why, but it did the trick.

Answer 4

If you remove a directory or directories from the Directory Table, This will cause an issue with other tables still using those directory variables.