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How to work around a possible XNA Game Studio setup failure on Windows 10 technical preview

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A while back, I wrote about an application compatibility issue that can cause the Windows Phone SDK and XNA Game Studio to fail to install on Windows 8 and Windows 8.1.  Recently, I heard from a colleague who ran into a similar-sounding issue when trying to install XNA Game Studio on the Windows 10 technical preview.  After looking at the setup log files, I confirmed that the same application compatibility issue that affected these installers on Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 also affects them on Windows 10.  The application compatibility dialog that appears in this scenario on Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 links directly to the blog post that contains the workaround, but the equivalent dialog on the Windows 10 technical preview doesn’t link there currently.

How to work around this issue

To summarize my other blog post, if you run into an issue installing XNA Game Studio on the Windows 10 technical preview, you can solve it in most cases by downloading and installing the latest version of the Games for Windows – LIVE Redistributable from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=5549 or https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=201134, then re-running XNA Game Studio setup.

What to do if the workaround doesn’t help

If you have already installed the latest version of the Games for Windows – LIVE Redistributable and XNA Game Studio setup still fails, you are running into a different issue than the one described above, and you will have to look at the setup log files to determine the root cause.

You can find XNA Game Studio setup log files at the following locations:

  • XNA Game Studio 4.0 Refresh - %temp%\XNA Game Studio 4.0 Setup\Logs
  • XNA Game Studio 4.0 - %temp%\XNA Game Studio 4.0 Setup\Logs
  • XNA Game Studio 3.1 - %temp%\XNA Game Studio 3.1 Setup\Logs
  • XNA Game Studio 3.0 - %temp%\XNA Game Studio 3.0 Setup\Logs
  • XNA Game Studio 2.0 - %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft XNA\XNA Game Studio\v2.0\Setup\Logs

Once you have gathered your setup log files, please upload them to a file server of your choice (such as https://onedrive.live.com), and post a link to the log files in a comment on my blog to get additional support.

How to diagnose this issue

You can tell if this issue is the one causing XNA Game Studio to fail to install on your computer by doing the following:

  1. Look at the main XNA Game Studio setup log (named something like GameStudioSetup-20141019.123456.LOG in the log directory listed above).  It will show an error like this:

    Bootstrapper.exe Information: 0 : Failed to install C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft XNA\XNA Game Studio\v4.0\Setup\xnaliveproxy.msi for Task InstallXnaLiveProxy with Message = Microsoft.WindowsInstaller.InstallerException: Fatal error during installation.

  2. Look at the log file for xnaliveproxy.msi (named something like xnaliveproxy-20141019.123456.LOG in the log directory listed above).  It will show an error like this:

    CustomAction InitializeXnaLiveProxy returned actual error code -1073741512 (note this may not be 100% accurate if translation happened inside sandbox)

The error code -1073741512 means STATUS_ORDINAL_NOT_FOUND (The ordinal could not be located in the dynamic link library.)  That error code is the indicator that you’re running into the Game for Windows – LIVE application compatibility issue.

<update date="12/21/2015">Fixed broken download link for Games for Windows - LIVE Redistributable. </update>

Comments

  • Anonymous
    November 06, 2014
    Thank you for doing this! visualstudio.uservoice.com/.../3725445-xna-5

  • Anonymous
    September 19, 2015
    Thank you so much, This worked for me after hours of trying to figure out why I couldn't run a simple game (Gnomoria) on my windows 10 PC.

  • Anonymous
    November 12, 2015
    onedrive.live.com/redir

  • Anonymous
    November 12, 2015
    Hi Jonatan - Your logs show a different error than the one described in this blog post.  This is the error that I see: MSI Error: Microsoft XNA Game Studio 4.0 (Visual Studio) requires Visual Studio 2010, Visual C# 2010 Express, or Windows Phone Developer Tools.  Install the required application, and then relaunch setup. You will need to make sure that you have one of these editions of Visual Studio installed in order to install XNA Game Studio 4.0 on your PC.

  • Anonymous
    December 18, 2015
    Great!! works just by download and install the Games for Windows – LIVE Redistributable from microsoft (BTW - the link above is not working just look at google for Games for Windows – LIVE Redistributable - and download from the microsoft site)

  • Anonymous
    December 21, 2015
    Hi Tal - Thanks for letting me know about the broken download link.  I've updated the main post to fix that issue.

  • Anonymous
    December 22, 2015
    WORKED!! thanks a lot win 8.1 on asus ux32vd with vb c# 2010 installed

  • Anonymous
    March 20, 2016
    This worked finally, but because microsoft make it so hard to download visual studio 2010 expess from their site. I had to download it from torrent site, very bad.

  • Anonymous
    October 13, 2016
    Hello, Mr. Stebner. I am an LBCC student with a new Microsoft Imagine account. I recently attempted to install Microsoft XNA Game Studio 4.0 and I have the latest versions of Games for Windows - LIVE, Visual Studio, and Visual Studio Code. I have followed your instructions from "Steps to install XNA Game Studio without using the setup bootstrapper" (https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/astebner/2009/06/12/steps-to-install-xna-game-studio-without-using-the-setup-bootstrapper/) but that didn't seem to be the right solution for my issue. I followed each step down to step 10 where it says to run xnags_visualstudio.msi, but when I do so I receive an error message. The message suggests that I do not have Visual Studio 2010, Visual C# 2010 Express, or Windows Phone Developer Tools. While it is true that I do not have the 2010 versions of the first two programs, I thought that the up-to-date versions would be good enough. After seeing that they weren't good enough, I downloaded and installed Windows Phone SDK 8; but still no luck.Here are my XNA Game Studio 4.0 log files and a screenshot that shows the error message over the installation window: https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=%21ACGrSfpzVbg8ot0&id=2B35C1F07F68DE97%2121840&cid=2B35C1F07F68DE97I'd really love to experiment with this program but it doesn't seem to recognize newer versions of Visual Studio. If there's anything that can be done about this I would greatly appreciate a suggestion. Thank you for your time.

  • Anonymous
    May 09, 2017
    THANKS!!!!!! IT WORKED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  • Anonymous
    September 05, 2017
    Solved my problem, Thank you!