Install Citrix XenApp 6.5 hotfixes fails with the message: “Installation ended prematurely because of an error.”

Problem

I ran into an interesting problem the other day when I was trying to install a bunch of hotfixes for a few Citrix XenApp 6.5 servers:

What I noticed was that no matter which hotfix I ran, the installation would fail with the following error:

Installation ended prematurely because of an error.

Note that I ran all of the hotfixes in a command prompt ran as an administrator so I proceeded to turn on verbose logging during the install with the following command:

msiexec /p XA650W2K8R2X644001.msp /L*v install.log

Product: Citrix XenApp 6.5 - Update 'XA650W2K8R2X64001' could not be installed. Error code 1603. Additional information is available in the log file D:\XenApp Hotfixes\install.log.

Unfortunately, the logs weren’t all that useful as there was a lot of content but not really anything that stuck out to tell me what was wrong:

MSI (s) (EC:5C) [16:53:02:783]: Restoring environment variables

MSI (s) (EC:5C) [16:53:02:783]: Destroying RemoteAPI object.

MSI (s) (EC:C4) [16:53:02:783]: Custom Action Manager thread ending.

MSI (c) (E4:7C) [16:53:02:799]: Back from server. Return value: 1603

MSI (c) (E4:7C) [16:53:02:799]: Decrementing counter to disable shutdown. If counter >= 0, shutdown will be denied.  Counter after decrement: -1

MSI (c) (E4:7C) [16:53:02:799]: PROPERTY CHANGE: Deleting SECONDSEQUENCE property. Its current value is '1'.

Action ended 16:53:02: ExecuteAction. Return value 3.

MSI (c) (E4:7C) [16:53:02:799]: Doing action: Fatal_Error

Action 16:53:02: Fatal_Error.

Action start 16:53:02: Fatal_Error.

MSI (c) (E4:7C) [16:53:02:799]: Note: 1: 2235 2:  3: ExtendedType 4: SELECT `Action`,`Type`,`Source`,`Target`, NULL, `ExtendedType` FROM `CustomAction` WHERE `Action` = 'Fatal_Error'

Action 16:53:02: Fatal_Error. Dialog created

Solution

After doing a bit of research, I found the following forum post: http://forums.citrix.com/thread.jspa?threadID=297715&start=30&tstart=0 where a user indicated that this had to do with an expired Citrix certificate on the server.

After going ahead and delete the certificate Citrix Systems, Inc. from the local computer store, the hotfixes began to install properly.