Add to My Yahoo! | Google Reader or Homepage | Add to Windows Live | Add to Windows Live Alerts

Wictor Wilén

Microsoft Certified Master (MCM) - SharePoint 2010 | Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) - SharePoint Server MVP | Author

Reinstalling SharePoint after a failed Language Pack install

Posted at 2009-05-08 06:54 by Wictor Wilén in SharePoint with 5 comments.

After doing some experimental stuff (don't ask me what!) with my local (Windows 7) SharePoint installation I uninstalled it completely and was going to install it from scratch once again I encountered a strange error. A dialog as below popped up:

The product ID specified was not found on the machine.

First I thought that SharePoint did not uninstall correctly and searched the registry as a maniac and found nothing. Then I checked the installation log files, which did not make things much clearer:

   1: Error: Server products do not support select UI Type: InvalidProductFromARP. 
   2: Showing parent-less message Title: 'Setup Error', Message: 'The product ID specified was not found on the machine.' 
   3: Message returned: 1 
   4: Error: Server products do not support select UI Type: InvalidProductFromARP. 
   5: Catalyst execution finished: 05/08/2009 14:52:39.  Return code: 30040.  Exception caught: InvalidProductFromARP. 
   6: PERF: TickCount=11319697 Name=RunSetup Description=End function

After some investigation I checked the folder that the setup program extracts the files to, which always have the same name and is not removed after the installation is done (*see more information below). It's located in c:\Users\Profile\AppData\Local\xtracted\. There I found some "leftovers" from the failed language pack, see image below. Folders such as WSS.sv-se and WSSLPK.sv-se is used during the installation and therefore checked when installing WSS. And since I have removed everything and have no WSS on the machine it fails when installing the language packs.

xtracted

After removing the xtracted folder everything went smooth.

This little adventure gave a good insight on how the SharePoint installer works and it's a smart one.

* Worth to notice that all of this is experienced on Windows 7 RC using WSSOnVista. So it might not be the same on a server installation, but I will for sure make sure that the extracted folder are removed before I reinstall SharePoint on any machines in the future. On Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 I have not seen any leftovers from the xtracted folder, but I have not verified it.

Comments and trackbacks

#  Check the gac too by Mohamed Hachem
Screenshot from websnpr well I did remove those files for me it was French package. I still had the error. 1) I repaired my SharePoint installation. 2) I looked at the gac some of my application dlls were not there I put them there and added safe statements on the web config of my site, all is working now. hope that will help, cheers
#  Thanks for the observation by Raghu
Screenshot from websnpr Your tip helped me .After removing the extracted files I was able to proceed with my installation
#  Jānis Veinbergs by
Screenshot from websnpr Exactly the same problem, exactly the same environment and this worked. Thanks. However the path was slightly different: c:\Users\Profile\AppData\Local\Temp\xtracted\ or %temp%\xtracted
#  works for same error with project 2010 rtm by mark
Screenshot from websnpr just delete all the temp folders
#  great by Bijuterii Ieftine
Screenshot from websnpr Wow.. i had that problem a few weeks ago and i had no idea how to fix the problem! Thanks for sharing the information with us!
Make a comment on this post:
Subject:  

Your name:  
Your Url:  
Note: submissions may have to be approved before being visible, so don't submit your comment multiple times.