Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Setup Failure on 64-bit Vista Solved
September 12, 2008When trying to update my Visual Studio 2008 to Service Pack 1 (I’m on Vista x64), the update for the remote debugger (KB945140) was halting with an error. Checking the first log showed the message: Error 1324.The folder path ‘Program Files’ contains an invalid character. Moving to the log file of the installer itself, the VS90sp1-KB945140-X64-ENU.msp patch, made a reference to an F:\PFILES folder instead of my normal Program Files folder.
My F:\ drive is a virtual drive from PowerISO, which is used to mount disk images. Turning off my virtual drives allowed the installation to proceed successfully. I’m posting that here to remember for next time 
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I saw a post where this issue also was seen with another virtual drive utility, Virtual CloneDrive. The installer seems to think they’re hard drives and is trying to install to them
Awesome! Thanks for posting this, I couldn’t figure out what the problem was. PowerISO was the cause for me too.
I had the same problem caused by VS90sp1-KB945140-X64-ENU.msp, but it refered to my actual DVD drive, I disabled it then got an invalid location error…
Searched the registry for the path z:\pfiles (z: being my DVD) and then changed the entry I found, which was “Z:\PFiles\CFiles” to “C:\Program Files\Common Files”… patch would then run.
Also had issues running the install initially getting an error “PerformMsiOperation returned 0×641″ and “The Windows Installer Service could not be accessed.”, having spent hours at it traced that one down to the “Microsoft Office Visual Web Developer 2007″ having a suspended install!?! Had to use MSI Cleanup Utility to remove it and hoping that doesn’t muck-up Visual Studio.
Looks like the Visual Studio installer needs some improvement. The same issue occurs when Daemon Tools is running, as well.
Thanks for an article, it worked out.
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