Summary

Discussion of Windows Installer error 1101.

Symptoms

When running an installation, the following error may occur:

"Error 1101: Error reading from file C:\Windows\Temp...\MyTransform.mst"

Note that the path and the name of the transform file may vary.

This error may also appear as:

"Error 1101: Could not open file stream: [2]. System error: [3]"

[2] and [3] are placeholders where information specific to the error appears.

This error most commonly occurs when the setup includes multiple languages, such as English and French.

Cause

This is a general error message and can occur when another process has failed.

Resolution

This error message is also a general error message that indicates another error has occurred in the setup process. To narrow down to the specific error, note the system error in placeholder [3] indicated in the Symptoms section above. Researching this error code should provide more specific information on the exact failure that occurred.

In addition, verbosely logging the installation will assist in providing further information as to what specifically occurred to cause this error. Identifying the original error that occurred can help narrow down to the specific source of the problem. Additional information on logging an installation can be found in the following Knowledge Base articles listed below.

It may be helpful to scan through the log file and identify any errors or warnings that may have occurred. Additional information on errors and warnings that may appear in the log file can be found in the Windows Installer Help Library by searching for that particular error code.

Additional Information

If using InstallShield Developer 7.02 or earlier, the functionality for multilingual setups was modified. Each additional language had a unique transform, or .MST file, which contained language-specific information, such as the translated strings. This error occurs if the transform file containing the language needed by the setup was missing from its expected location.

To resolve this behavior, upgrade to InstallShield Developer 7.03 or later. The updated version streams the transform files into the setup.exe file, and therefore, they are not kept in a separate location. When the setup needs that particular language, it then obtains that information directly from the setup.exe file, rather than having to look for a separate transform file elsewhere on the machine.

For more information on acquiring the latest version of InstallShield, refer to the InstallShield page of the Revenera website.

This error is briefly documented in Windows Installer Error Messages (for Developers).

For additional information on transforms, or .MST files, see the InstallShield Help Library.

Related KB Articles

Logging a MSI Installation
Logging an InstallScript MSI Project