Q: Boot Camp Update does not install completely.

No, I just tried it again from inside Parallels Desktop in case that might work better. It was unlikely, and as I expected the result turned out to be identical to running the update in native Boot Camp.

I also tried downloading the Boot Camp Drivers 2.2 update directly from the Apple web site and running the installer, since that has often worked for me when I had problems with Software Update. It behaved exactly the same as Software Update. It appeared to complete normally, but after I restarted Windows all software versions seemed unchanged, and Software Update still reported that the update was needed.

I wonder what is the common factor in our two systems causing the update to fail. I am sure that this update works on most systems or it would never have passed quality control. Do you use Parallels Desktop 4 to run your Boot Camp partition along with Mac OS?

I've used Parallels through several releases. Release 4 (since I upgraded, 6 months after it came out) has been really good -- nearly as fast as native for most things other than gaming, and it allows easy drag and drop between the boot camp (NTFS) and Mac partitions. Release 5 is now out, but reviews suggest that it is still full of bugs; wait a bit before buying it if you are considering it.

We should try to find out what commonality we have in our systems, to explain why we are having trouble when many others are not (I assume). On the Mac side, I use Microsoft Office 2004 a lot. In Windows I have the latest OpenOffice, some tax software, and MacDrive to let me access my OS X partition when booted into boot camp. Not a lot more; I do nearly everything on the Mac side.

Is your hardware similar to mine? I usually run with 2 screens on the Mac side; in Windows I did try that (playing with the nVidia control panel, which seemed buggy) but ended up going with just the built in 13" screen of my (latest) Macbook Pro 13".

What you did should have worked, but seems to have encountered the same kind of instant failure that we both have seen with the 2.2 installer.

Possibly the installer has logged some kind of useful error message somewhere. I just checked the Windows system logs and discovered that when I run the installer, I get two messages logged with events 1040 and 1042 in that order. Unfortunately those events seem to be some kind of generic failure to open required resources; it does not tell us what resources were missing or locked.

If someone reading this has experience debugging Windows installers, could you please suggest a way to run the installer in debug mode, or a place to look for additional log information, so that we can find out more about what is going wrong. I have already reported this to Apple as a bug, but I have very little experience debugging Windows and don't know how to gather information to help nail down the cause. The more information we can capture, the better the chance of solving this quickly.

I also tried this technique without apparent success. However when I looked in the system logs I found in addition to the information messages 1040 and 1042 seen before, my latest run of the installer generated an Error message with ID 1603. Double clicked on it and got more details. It seems to be a generic fatal error in the Microsoft installer. It pointed me at a Knowledge Base article on enabling logging in the installer (reproduced in part below). I tried is (using *v as the value in the new registry entry; I may try now including all the individual options) but I could not find any new log files generated as specified, even searching the whole computer, including system files, for a file with name Msi*.log. Here is the KB article:
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Article ID: 314852 - Last Review: December 1, 2007 - Revision: 1.5
How to Enable Windows Installer Logging in Windows XP

This article was previously published under Q314852

SUMMARY This article describes the registry-activated logging service that Windows includes for diagnosis of issues that involve Windows Installer.

The registry entry in this article is valid for all Windows platforms.
Windows Installer uses logging to help you troubleshoot issues that may arise when you install software packages. After you enable logging, you can try the unsuccessful installation again. Windows Installer tracks the progress and posts the data to the Temp folder.

The file name of the new log varies, but the file name begins with the letters "Msi" and ends with a .log extension.

To find the location of the new log in the Temp folder, type cd %temp% at a command prompt, and then press ENTER.

Enable Windows Installer Logging by Adding Registry Entries
Important This section, method, or task contains steps that tell you how to modify the registry. However, serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly. Therefore, make sure that you follow these steps carefully. For added protection, back up the registry before you modify it. Then, you can restore the registry if a problem occurs. For more information about how to back up and restore the registry, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: 322756 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/322756/ ) How to back up and restore the registry in Windows.

Start Registry Editor (Regedt32.exe), and then create the following path and keys in the registry:
HKEYLOCALMACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Installer
Reg_SZ: Logging
Value: voicewarmup
The letters in the value field are the options that are available to use with Windows Installer logging. You can use the options in any order. Each option turns on a specific logging mode. For MSI version 1.1, the function of each option is as follows :
v - Verbose output
o - Out-of-disk-space messages
i - Status messages
c - Initial UI parameters
e - All error messages
w - Non-fatal warnings
a - Start up of actions
r - Action-specific records
m - Out-of-memory or fatal exit information
u - User requests
p - Terminal properties
+ - Append to existing file
! - Flush each line to the log

* - Wildcard, to log all information except for the v option. To include the v option, specify *v.
It is recommended that you use this service only for troubleshooting. Leaving the service turned on creates a new Msi*.log file every time you use the Add/Remove Programs tool in Control Panel. This activity adversely affects system performance and disk space.
For more information about MSI logging, refer to Windows Help. Search Help by using the phrase "msi logging," and then click the "Managing options for computers through Group Policy" topic.
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APPLIES TO
Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
Microsoft Windows XP Professional
Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 Edition

©2010 Microsoft

NOTE: In my reply above I used the two characters asterisk v "*v" but the forum system removed the asterisk and converted part of my reply to bold type, up to and including the next asterisk in my reply (which it also removed).