WPI 4.5 Error after upgrading

Question

I just upgraded Web Platform Installer to version 4.5 on two separate Windows 8 machines. (One is a physical machine and the other is a VM). I am unable to run WPI 4.5, both are showing the following same error:

An error occurred while parsing EntityName. Line 42134, position 81.

Update: Confirmed it was an error with the product list from Microsoft. Found this log file entry:

DownloadManager Information: 0 : Loading product xml from: https://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9817844
DownloadManager Information: 0 : https://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9817844 responded with 302
DownloadManager Information: 0 : Response headers:
HTTP/1.1 302 Found
Cache-Control: private
Content-Length: 175
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Expires: Tue, 19 Feb 2013 18:23:59 GMT
Location: https://www.microsoft.com/web/webpi/4.5/webproductlist.xml
Server: Microsoft-IIS/7.5
X-AspNet-Version: 2.0.50727
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2013 18:24:59 GMT


DownloadManager Error: 0 : Error loading downloaded product file: 'System.Xml.XmlException: An error occurred while parsing EntityName. Line 42134, position 81.
   at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.Throw(Exception e)
   at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.Throw(String res, String arg)
   at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.ParseEntityName()
   at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.ParseEntityReference()
   at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.Read()
   at System.Xml.XmlLoader.LoadNode(Boolean skipOverWhitespace)
   at System.Xml.XmlLoader.LoadDocSequence(XmlDocument parentDoc)
   at System.Xml.XmlLoader.Load(XmlDocument doc, XmlReader reader, Boolean preserveWhitespace)
   at System.Xml.XmlDocument.Load(XmlReader reader)
   at Microsoft.Web.PlatformInstaller.LineInfoDocument.Load(XmlReader reader)
   at System.Xml.XmlDocument.Load(TextReader txtReader)
   at Microsoft.Web.PlatformInstaller.ProductManager.LoadDocument(String xmlPath)
   at Microsoft.Web.PlatformInstaller.ProductManager.LoadFromXml(String xmlFile, Boolean loadEnclosures)
   at Microsoft.Web.PlatformInstaller.ProductManager.Load(Uri productFileUrl, Boolean filterByArchitectureAndOS, Boolean loadEnclosures, Boolean useCachedVersion, String cacheDirectory, Architecture architecture, Int32 majorOS, Int32 minorOS, Int32 majorSP, Int32 minorSP, Int32 osType)'

Answer 1

I'm really glad Google pointed me to this question. I got the same error literally 2 minutes after you posted this question...

It seems to have been a Microsoft server-side error, as it has corrected itself for me since I started typing this answer.