Sage Broken after Windows updatees on 12/23.

[mbrown3]

Yesterday (12/23), I got a notice saying that there were critical updates for windows. So I installed them and rebooted, but when Sage tried to start, it gave the error message, "Error while unpacking program: code 2. Please report to author." I tried reinstalling Sage (and it says it completes successfully), but the error keeps showing up when I try to run it. I'm running Win7 64-bit. Anyone else seeing this?

[davephan]

You might try uninstalling the patches.

The best solution is to take an image of the boot/programs drive before applying Windows updates. You can recover in 30 minutes if your system fails due to a bad Windows update or other problems.

After the patch failure, you could recover with the image, then apply the patches one by one do determine which patch causes the system to fail. It's also possible that when the patches are applied again, the system might not fail. Patching can be a bit flaky at times.

If you don't have an image, and uninstalling the patches does not fix the problem, then you could rebuild your system from scratch and take an image so you will prepared before the next failure.

Dave

[APillowOfClouds]

try re-enabling UAC if you have disabled it - it may need to prompt you about something. I know FireFox does not seem to want to install properly with UAC disabled.

[APillowOfClouds]

Sounds like it's a common problem:

http://www.google.com/search?q=Error...gs_rfai=&pbx=1

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=50625

[mitchedo]

I shall assume that since SageTV runs on Java, that there are no ActiveX issues. We run a rather complex VBA plug-in for Excel at work that uses several VB6 ActiveX libraries. Windows updates was constantly killing the ActiveX dll's until I found the more recent ones to distribute with the plug-in.

Anyways, Sage won't have that issue -- or some similar issue, right?

As far as I know, my Win7 Sage server has taken all its updates without any issues. ...knock on wood.

[mbrown3]

And the winner is...APillowOfClouds! Re-enabling UAC did the trick. After restart, Sage install worked OK (though I had to re-run setp/config).

Dave, I'm not sure you understood my question...I want the windows update(s) installed. I just don't want it to break Sage. The patches installed successfully, but if Sage isn't working afterwards, removing the patches to get Sage to work is not a viable solution...because it still leaves the security holes open that were patched in the first place. The security of a patched system trumps a working Sage (though, again, I think they both should still work).

Oddly, I've never had UAC enabled on my machine, and have never had any trouble until the 12/23 windows update. Weird.

Anyway, if anyone else runs into this, try re-enabling (or maybe dis-abling, if it's already enabled?) UAC. Thanks APillowOfClouds!

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by APillowOfClouds

Sounds like it's a common problem:

http://www.google.com/search?q=Error...gs_rfai=&pbx=1

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=50625

I find it funny that one of them on Google is about Internet Explorer 8

[davephan]

Originally Posted by mbrown3

And the winner is...APillowOfClouds! Re-enabling UAC did the trick. After restart, Sage install worked OK (though I had to re-run setp/config).

Dave, I'm not sure you understood my question...I want the windows update(s) installed. I just don't want it to break Sage. The patches installed successfully, but if Sage isn't working afterwards, removing the patches to get Sage to work is not a viable solution...because it still leaves the security holes open that were patched in the first place. The security of a patched system trumps a working Sage (though, again, I think they both should still work).

Oddly, I've never had UAC enabled on my machine, and have never had any trouble until the 12/23 windows update. Weird.

Anyway, if anyone else runs into this, try re-enabling (or maybe dis-abling, if it's already enabled?) UAC. Thanks APillowOfClouds!

My point was that anything can cause SageTV to stop functioning. It could be something other than a patch that went bad causing the problem. It may be very difficult to isolate the problem to a patch, since something else could cause the problem that happened to occur in the same time frame as the patching. Although it could be the patching.

Patching can be flaky sometimes. It's possible to apply a patch and it breaks something. If you recover the system with an image and re-apply the same patch on the same computer, then it may work.

Once you get your system to a working state where everything functions perfectly or near perfectly, then you should take an image. Also take an image periodically to capture any system changes from your base image. Then the next time your system fails, you will be ready. The recovery time is 30 minutes when you recover back to a known working state with an image.

If the recovery does not work with an image, then you know you have a hardware problem. You can then fix the hardware problem and apply the image. The more advanced imaging products can be recovered to different hardware. So you could replace your system board (in case it goes bad) and still recover the system to a different model system board.

Since this appears to be a software issue that caused the problem, the image would have fixed the problem. You would not know what changes actually fixed the problem because the image restoration is a 'shotgun' approach. However, it does not matter because your system is working again in 30 minutes. After the system is recovered with an image, the same type of problem normally does not re-occur.

Your problems could have been much worse, such as the computer may not even be bootable or you have very flaky Blue Screen problems. These annoying problems can also be fixed with a recovery from an image. So, my advise is to be prepared for failures ahead of time when your system is working. Don't wait until it is too late!

Acronis has a sale going on now for their Acronis True Image Home 2011 three license family pack for only $59.99. You could protect three computers for a very cheap price. The offer expires after December 31, 2010, so you would have to order very soon.

http://www.acronis.com/

Dave

[APillowOfClouds]

Originally Posted by mbrown3

And the winner is...APillowOfClouds! Re-enabling UAC did the trick. After restart, Sage install worked OK (though I had to re-run setp/config).

Dave, I'm not sure you understood my question...I want the windows update(s) installed. I just don't want it to break Sage. The patches installed successfully, but if Sage isn't working afterwards, removing the patches to get Sage to work is not a viable solution...because it still leaves the security holes open that were patched in the first place. The security of a patched system trumps a working Sage (though, again, I think they both should still work).

Oddly, I've never had UAC enabled on my machine, and have never had any trouble until the 12/23 windows update. Weird.

Anyway, if anyone else runs into this, try re-enabling (or maybe dis-abling, if it's already enabled?) UAC. Thanks APillowOfClouds!

Glad to help!