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Whenever I install using .MSI, the system freezes right after starting the Volume Shadow Copy Service/etc, and creating a System Restore Point.

If possible, I'd rather not disable System Restore, as this deletes all previous restore points. I also don't want to kill the service/process, although I haven't tried this one yet to see if it even works.

How can I prevent a system restore point from being created while installing using a MSI launcher?

kinokijuf
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Mateen Ulhaq
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    Temporarily Disable "Volume Shadow Copy" service in Windows Services. – Moab Mar 29 '11 at 04:07
  • @Moab Oh, right. :) But is there any way to make it do this automatically before every install, and then revert it back after the install? – Mateen Ulhaq Mar 29 '11 at 04:33
  • Which OS are you running? – Gaff Mar 29 '11 at 07:21
  • @Gareth I thought MSI was exclusive to Windows, but if you're asking which OS version, it's Vista Home Premium SP2. – Mateen Ulhaq Mar 29 '11 at 07:27
  • @muntoo Thanks, I was after which version of Windows you were on. You could take a look at my answer below but not sure how effective it will be in fixing VSS, especially as a lot of the issues seem to be on Windows 2003 and not Vista. – Gaff Mar 29 '11 at 07:31
  • @muntoo, I don't know of anything "automatic', I suppose one could use a script to disable and then enable, would make it a bit easier but not automatic. You would need to edit your original question to ask for help scripting to disable-enable Volume Shadow Copy service. – Moab Mar 29 '11 at 15:13
  • @Moab I wasn't looking for scripts, but oh well. – Mateen Ulhaq Mar 29 '11 at 21:20

2 Answers2

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UPDATE: Linking to similar content on serverfault.com. Remember that this takes you to information intended for system administrators. As a super user / power user, the below summary might be better.

UPDATE: Windows Installer 5 (available on Windows Server 2012, Windows 8, Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows 7) now features a new property MSIFASTINSTALL which can be used to speed up the installation of a large MSI package. See the link above for valid values. I would suggest 3 for no restore point, and only FileCosting (the process of determining disk space requirement). Here is a sample:

msiexec.exe /I "D:\winzip112.msi" /QN MSIFASTINSTALL=3

It is also possible to set the DISABLEROLLBACK property to disable rollback support in the MSI installer. I would strongly advise against using this unless you are staging a fresh PC. This is a special case when you can just start over if something fails. For a computer in real use I would not recommend enabling this property.

The irony is that disabling rollback will speed up things the most if you are running a huge update package that replaces lots of files. It could be quite significant, but unsafe.

Stein Åsmul
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  • Reading the documentation i dont think this is related to System Restore, but about the rollback process which is required if an installation fails. – Dinesh Manne Jun 13 '11 at 16:17
  • The MSIFASTINSTALLER relates to System Restore and file costing (which is the comparison of the size of the files to install versus the size of existing, installed files - among other things), DISABLEROLLBACK relates to the creation of backup files to restore the system in case the installation fails. – Stein Åsmul May 22 '14 at 11:37
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If you scroll down through this thread, there's a number of things you could try for repairing the Volume Shadow Copy Service if you wanted to give that a go.

Gaff
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