MAKEMSI quickly and reliably creates MSI files in a non-programmatic way\Windows Installer FAQ (the basics)Return Codes and Error Codes or TextError Codes1309 - Error reading from file: [3]. {{ System error [2].}} Verify that the file exists and that you can access it.

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1309 - Error reading from file: [3]. {{ System error [2].}} Verify that the file exists and that you can access it.

This is obviously a fairly generic error message which could occur for all sorts of reasons but what may not be obvious is that it may not be your permissions which matter, it may be the system account, for example consider this msi:

#include "ME.MMH"
<$DirectoryTree Key="INSTALLDIR" Dir="c:\SomeInstDir">
<$Files "TryMe.*" DestDir="INSTALLDIR">

By default MAKEMSI creates per-machine installs, if the local system account doesn't have access to "c:\SomeInstDir" then the install will fail as the system account will be denied access.

If you now edit that msi with "ORCA" and go to the "Property" table table and delete "ALLUSERS" (it should have a value of "1"), and retry the install it will succeed! Now try to uninstall it, it will fail!

This is a Windows Installer bug (in many if not all versions), even though we are now installing per-user ("just me"), it installs the file under your account but tries to uninstall under the system account!

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