Wednesday, June 23, 2010

PSExec failing on Windows XP 64-bit

Symptoms

Recently, I used a batch script in combination with PSExec to try to install an MSI file on a remote computer with Windows XP 64-bit. The installation worked just fine on Windows XP and Windows 7 32-bit but failed on the 64-bit OS. I kept getting the cryptic return code 1 from the batch script and redirecting the output of the batch script yielded an empty log file.

I was pulling my hair out when I noticed I was using version 1.95 of PSExec. After upgrading my batch script magically worked! I'm not sure why I was using an old version but from here forward I'll make sure to have 1.98 installed.

Solution

Install PSExec 1.98 and magically PSExec now works just fine on Windows XP 64-bit machines.