help troubleshooting Steinberg WaveLab installation to cyan box

S

sandb0xie

New member
Trying to install Steinberg WaveLab to a Sandboxie-Plus 1.16.8 cyan box, the installation process fails silently and no errors are shown.

  • Various Trace logs don't reveal anything obvious
  • "Make applications think they are running elevated" is enabled
  • "Allow MSIServer to run with a sandboxed system token.." is enabled

What is the best way to troubleshoot and diagnose the issue?
 
I would start by checking WaveLab’s own installer logs, if it creates any. Many installers write a detailed log file when something fails, and that will usually show the exact error code or component that’s breaking. That information is much more reliable than the Sandboxie trace logs for this kind of issue.

Once you have the installer’s error code or log entry, it’s much easier to determine whether the failure is caused by Sandboxie settings, elevation behavior, or something else entirely.

If you can find and share the log snippet, we can help analyze it.
 
Thank you, @offhub!

Scouring the sandbox, the failed installer does not appear to generate any logs.

Here is what seems to happen processwise as shown in the Sandboxie interface:
WaveLab's setup.exe runs and tries to launch as elevated. Click to accept elevation, then WerFault.exe executes with:
C:\WINDOWS\system32\WerFault.exe -u -p 51164 -s 556
...where 51164 is the process ID of setup.exe.
Then SandboxieRpcSS.exe executes and is "Terminated as System (Sbie RpcSs)".
SandboxieDcomLaunch.exe executes and is "Terminated as System (Sbie DcomLaunch)".

Nothing is seen on-screen. All the above terminate and nothing happens.
 
Sbie messages shows:

WerFault.exe: SBIE2111 Process is not accessible: $:Setup.exe, call OpenProcess (C0000022) access=001FFFFF initialized=1
 
sandb0xie said:
Process is not accessible: $:Setup.exe
Click to expand...

As this is about a cyan box, it appears to be that the installer is placed in a folder that is not readable or that the installer uses folders that are not readable. Those can be configured in the Sandbox Options at Resource Access.
 
@bastik-1001 sorry for the mundane questions - how would the desired readable folders be figured out? All folders within the sandbox are readable, and it's expected that Sandboxie is keeping everything within the cyan box, so not sure what other locations would be involved. Your insights are much appreciated.
 
I am not aware if Sandboxie itself catches this in its trace log (View > Trace Logging), which can be applied to a single sandbox. I know that some tools attempt to track the installation process, like ZSoft Uninstaller, but I never used it and can't tell you how well they work. You can use Sysinternal's Process Monitor (originally developed by Mark Russinovich and then acquired by Microsoft). It tracks registry and file system activity, as well as network activity. You can use the process name or the PID (process ID or parent PID) to filter for activity by the installer. It's probably "create file" or "write file".
 
@bastik-1001 Thank you for your continued patient guidance.
In case you have time to help sort this out, a .csv file was sent to you via direct message which includes the Process Monitor events filtered for the WaveLab setup. If you can spot something obvious in the events that would save troubleshooting time, much appreciated!!
 
The setup wants to create files in C:\Windows\Sys and C:\Users\Public. The former does not exist for me and the latter is a user account shared by all users, maybe the installer does not like seeing it being empty. Do you see a folder named "Sys"?

Code: 
NormalFilePath=C:\Windows\Sys\*
NormalFilePath=C:\Users\Public\*

Adding the above to the sandbox you are trying to install it to might be helpful, it should be able to create the rest of the folders and files in the sandbox.
 
Thank you for this suggestion.

Adding NormalFilePath=C:\Windows\Sys\* and NormalFilePath=C:\Users\Public\* to the sandbox ini section did not seem to change the situation; the same failure occurs.

I updated the logfile with the current results when the NormalFilePath settings are applied.

Note: If this WaveLab is installed normally (not sandboxed) on a fresh new Windows machine, there is also no C:\Windows\Sys in existence and that directory is never created, yet WaveLab will install successfully.
 
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Thank you for trying again.

The folder path appeared strange to me and I did not expect it to exist.

I am not able to tell you why it fails in the sandbox. Maybe someone can look at the installation process and either find a workaround or if something is defective that it will be fixed.
 
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