Windows 8 Appx installation timeout during unit test execution

Question

We're running our Win8 Metro unit tests from powershell using vstest.console.exe, which is included with Visual Studio 2012. The way the process uses the unit test appx-package created by msbuild, and runs it:

\install\location\vstest.console.exe path\to\unittest.appx /InIsolation

From time to time the execution fails with a timeout.

Starting test execution, please wait...
Error: Installation of package 
'\absolute\path\to\unittest.appx' 
failed with Error: (0x5B4) Operation timed out. 
Unable to install Windows app package in 15 sec.

For more details look into Event Viewer under 
Applications and Services Logs -> Microsoft -> Windows 
  -> AppXDeployment-Server -> Microsoft-Windows-AppXDeploymentServer/Operational.

If checking the logs, as suggested by the tool, one can indeed see that there are some errors, but the package actually does seem to install after roughly 35 seconds. There is no real indication on the root cause of this problem though. Fierce googling didn't reveal anything, so maybe this category of problems would've been better solved with bing...

Is this a known issue? Are there some normal reasons for appx installation to fail with a timeout, and that can be fixed easily? The error seems to be related specifically to installation, not the unit testing as such. Normally the whole test execution with install and uninstall finishes in a few seconds.

If the answers to the questions above are no, then is it possible to increase the installation timeout either for the process, or system wide?

Answer 1

There is no way to change this timeout.

Can you give an idea about your appx ie size, content etc.