A local IT support customer who does CPA work, was getting errors submitting tax returns electronically. They were instructed to install an update to install the new forms needed. During the installation by one of the employees, it stopped responding and only half installed. They had been instructed to reinstall the old version over the current  install then run the update again. I was asked to perform the procedure. Every time I attempted to re-install the older version it would hang and then give me an error that it was the wrong operating system.  I attempted the install from a Windows 2003 and Windows XP system which is how it is normally installed.

After consulting with ProSystems support found that the problem was that the Microsoft installer was trying to run with the installation. The tech said “right after starting the install, open the task manager and kill any instances of MSIEXEC.exe that is running”. I did this and the install ran without any problem. I then apply the updates and it installed the needed updates, using the built in update agent, without any issues.

The nice thing is that when I asked the tech if this was documented anywhere, his response was “nope”.