Installation of the Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 does not terminate as expected and keeps running indefinitely

ENVIRONMENT:

Windows 7 SP1 (x86 and x64)

Windows 8 (x86 and x64)

Windows Server 2008 R2 (x64)

Windows Server 2012 (x64)

SYMPTOM AND INFERENCE:

Installation of the Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 does not terminate as expected and keeps running indefinitely. In fact you neither see the final page showing the success or failure message. The installation just keeps running. Additionally if you enable verbose logging on the machine as per https://support.microsoft.com/kb/223300 then you will notice the .txt and .html log files getting formed under the %temp% folder (Start >> Run >>%temp%). The size of these files will keep increasing with the following line getting appended to the log over and over again-

Warning 1909.Could not create Shortcut Visual Studio Itanium Cross Tools Command Prompt (2010).lnk. Verify that the destination folder exists and that you can access it. Are you sure you want to cancel?

The reason why the setup is unable to create the shortcut (.lnk) is an incorrectly valued environment variable, ComSpec.

RESOLUTION:

You need to go the Environment Variables (Start >> Run >> system.cpl >> advanced >> Environment Variables). Scroll through the lexically ordered list to get the variable by the name ComSpec and provide it with the correct value

%SystemRoot%\system32\cmd.exe

 

 

If you do not remember changing this value yourself then it is possible that it could have been modified by an application, particularly during its installation.

 

Content by: Ritwik Sinha