Windows Installer CleanUp Utility and Cisco VPN Client woes
I've been trouble shooting a problem with a VPN client install on a work machine recently. Obviously trying to fix VPN stuff requires testing remotely, a further pain.
This last time round I decided I'd upgrade the VPN client, I got hold of version 4.6 and attempted to install it. There was some horrid difficulty because the previous install version 4.0.4 had cracked up somewhere meaning, I couldn't uninstall - error 1271 don't ya know.
The broken install meant I couldn't run another install, apparently a module is broken...
Further to that, at one point during an attempted install the new version tries to uninstall the older version and balls' it up. It then sits in a rebooting loop atemping on every load to finish the install which means trying to uninstall again.
I googled around for a bit, as every good tech support does, and found a few people who had similar error messages, most of their resolutions weren't applicable, using system restore... didn't work on this machine. Manually removing the VPN client and reinstalling, yeah like I've not thought of that, tried the Cisco instructions and had them fail miserably.
Finally I started mooching around for a fix for broken uninstallers, which is what the cisco client seemed to be guilty of - I found this diamond in the rough. It must be pretty old as it sports, Windows 98 in it's compatibility list...
This bad boy presents a list of programs it thinks are installed, it then offers you the option of cleaning / removing another program's installer information... sweet. Although quite what Office has to do with it all I don't know...
One cleaned Cisco installer later, followed by a happy upgrade to version 4.6 VPN client and away we go...
This last time round I decided I'd upgrade the VPN client, I got hold of version 4.6 and attempted to install it. There was some horrid difficulty because the previous install version 4.0.4 had cracked up somewhere meaning, I couldn't uninstall - error 1271 don't ya know.
The broken install meant I couldn't run another install, apparently a module is broken...
Further to that, at one point during an attempted install the new version tries to uninstall the older version and balls' it up. It then sits in a rebooting loop atemping on every load to finish the install which means trying to uninstall again.
I googled around for a bit, as every good tech support does, and found a few people who had similar error messages, most of their resolutions weren't applicable, using system restore... didn't work on this machine. Manually removing the VPN client and reinstalling, yeah like I've not thought of that, tried the Cisco instructions and had them fail miserably.
Finally I started mooching around for a fix for broken uninstallers, which is what the cisco client seemed to be guilty of - I found this diamond in the rough. It must be pretty old as it sports, Windows 98 in it's compatibility list...
This bad boy presents a list of programs it thinks are installed, it then offers you the option of cleaning / removing another program's installer information... sweet. Although quite what Office has to do with it all I don't know...
One cleaned Cisco installer later, followed by a happy upgrade to version 4.6 VPN client and away we go...
posted by M at 11:56 PM
2 Comments:
You are my hero...I've had the same issue for a while now and had pretty much resigned myself to not using Cisco VPN software anymore! Thank you for the post!!
Oh my goodness, you are my hero as well. I searched all over and nothing worked. Just like you said, one clean install later and viola, VPN 4.6 installed like a charm. It worked so well I shared the knowledge and helped some of my other users. :-) thanks for posting.
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