NodeJS induced install failed - how to revert?

[oskargustafsson]

I'm not going to stick to the proposed template for reporting issues, but please bear with me.

I installed NodeJS 8 for Windows, using their standard installer. It asked me if I wanted to also install Chocolatey/Boxstarter, in order to be able to build C/C++ packages. I checked "yes", naively not even looking up what these things are.

After the NodeJS installation finished, some script started installing Chocolatey and Boxstarter. After a couple of restarts and lots of scary messages about disabling Windows Update and UAC, the installation failed (I think) with the following message:

Chocolatey reported an unsuccessful exit code of 3010. See C:\Users\oskar\AppData\Local\Boxstarter\boxstarter.log for details.
+ Boxstarter finished Calling Chocolatey to install . This may take several minutes to complete... 00:08:56.0752760
+ Boxstarter finished Calling Chocolatey to install . This may take several minutes to complete... 00:08:56.0752760
Only an exit code of non-zero will fail the package by default. Set
 `--failonstderr` if you want error messages to also fail a script. See
 `choco -h` for details.
 The install of tmpd8eb.tmp was successful.
  Software installed to 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Windows Phone Sirep\8.1\'

Chocolatey installed 1/1 packages. 0 packages failed.
 See the log for details (C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\logs\chocolatey.log).
Chocolatey : Chocolatey reported an unsuccessful exit code of 3010. See
C:\Users\oskar\AppData\Local\Boxstarter\boxstarter.log for details.
At C:\ProgramData\boxstarter\BoxStarter.Chocolatey\Invoke-ChocolateyBoxstarter.ps1:199 char:5
+     Chocolatey install $bootstrapPackage -source $source -force:$forc ...
+     ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo          : NotSpecified: (:) [Write-Error], WriteErrorException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.WriteErrorException,chocolatey

++ Boxstarter finished Calling Chocolatey to install tmpD8EB.tmp. This may take several minutes to complete... 00:09:05.8946195
True
Boxstarter: Restore Automatic Updates from Windows Update
Boxstarter: Enabling UAC

The log file (boxstarter.log) contains 600kb of uninteresting logs. The most relevant line, which is repeated a few times is:

Error getting parent process

Let me know if you need the full log.

Now, I can't help but to feel that my computer has been a bit violated, and my questions are:

• What did the install script do, and where can I find it, to read it myself? All those restarts indicate that it did some low level system alterations.
• What exactly did it install? Chocolatey, Boxstarter, VS modules, Python, what else?
• How do I undo all the things it did? E.g. what files do I remove, do I need to restore BIOS virtualization settings, what environment variables do I need to remove/reset?

[pauby]

Related to #356 ?

[gep13]

I am fairly sure I know what was going on here. I have been collecting some information together and hoping to put it all together in a write up tonight.

[gep13]

@oskargustafsson I am sorry to hear that you haven't had a good experience with Chocolatey and Boxstarter during the installation of the additional components for NodeJS.

Let me see if I can help you understand the different aspects of this, and how they all piece together.

Just so that everyone is on the same page, what we are talking about is this installation option for the NodeJS application:

You mention version 8, but I could only find this option in Version 10 of the application, so I am assuming that this is what was used.

When you choose to continue this option, you will be presented with this option once the installation of the Node Application is complete:

This will then install Chocolatey and also Boxstarter to complete the installation of the NodeJS additional components that NodeJS requires for the C/C++ side of things. The node developers have chosen to do this due to the fact that these components typically require a number of dependencies, and system reboots, and they have found that Chocolatey/Boxstarter is the best way to do this in an automated way.

Chocolatey is a Package Manager for Windows. It allows the installation of over 6000 different packages on Windows. It handles the installation of these packages in a repeatable and automatable way. In terms of what Chocolatey "installs" onto your system, it places a number of files into the default installation location, which is C:/ProgramData/Chocolatey and also adds the following environment variables:

Namely:

ChocolateyLastPathUpdate
ChocolateyToolsLocation
ChocolateyInstall

Boxstarter is a collection of PowerShell modules that builds on top of Chocolatey, and handles additional things like automating the reboot of the machine during application installations, and continuing the installation of the packages that are being installed. Due to how it was installed on your machine via the ClickOnce installer, you can find the installation files in the C:/ProgramData/Boxstarter folder.

Now, in terms of what was installed on your machine from our side, i.e. Chocolatey and Boxstarter. That is it.

On top of this, the NodeJS installer executed a Boxstarter script to install three packages on your machine. You can find what packages were installed by looking at the file that did this here:

https://github.com/nodejs/node/tree/master/tools/msvs/install_tools

Due to how Chocolatey Packages work, and the dependencies that they take, this actually caused additional packages to be installed. The end result would have been the following complete list of packages:

And in terms of what was added to Add/Remove Programs you can see that list here (which is from a clean VM where I ran the installation from):

NOTE: I manually installed 7-zip prior to starting the installation of NodeJS, and I don't believe that Silverlight nor the Oracle Tools were installed as part of this installation.

If you want to remove them, you can simply go into the Add/Remove Programs application of Windows, and choose to uninstall the ones that you no longer want. Once you have done that, you can remove the corresponding packages from the C:/ProgramData/Chocolatey folder, or choose to delete this folder entirely.

Now, in terms of what you mentioned here:

After a couple of restarts and lots of scary messages about disabling Windows Update and UAC

As you might be aware, when installing applications on a Windows Machine, there can be problems with Windows Updates blocking installations, and UAC prompts causing interaction from the user. As part of a Boxstarter execution it disables both of these things and then puts them back the way they were after it completes. With regard to the multiple reboots, I think you were actually running into a bug, which has now been fixed, which you can read about here:

chocolatey-community/chocolatey-packages#1129

Basically, one of the KB packages (which is a dependent package of one of the ones that the NodeJS team are trying to install) caused the execution of the Install-WindowsUpdate cmdlet which is part of Boxstarter. This would have caused all the outstanding Windows Update which needed to be installed on your machine to be installed, which would have likely required an update. This issue has now been resolved, and you shouldn't see this happen again.

All those restarts indicate that it did some low level system alterations.

As mentioned above, I believe that this was due in part to the installation of the outstanding Windows Updates on your machine, and also the tools that were installed. You would have been prompted to do these restarts manually if you had installed the applications manually.

do I need to restore BIOS virtualization settings, what environment variables do I need to remove/reset?

I don't think you will have to change anything in the BIOS. From what I can see, nothing will have changed in this regard. With regard to environment variables, I have mentioned the ones that were installed as part of Chocolatey/Boxstarter. I can't speak to anything else that might have been added as part of the NodeJS itself.

As part of creating this write up, I have ran the NodeJS installer a few times, with the option to add the additional components, and each time it has worked correctly, so I can't really speak to why it didn't work for you on your machine.

Please let me know if you have any additional questions.

[oskargustafsson]

@gep13 Thank you very much for the detailed explanations! You are correct, it was Node 10 that I installed. And guess I have only myself to blame for not doing any research before installing. I think the Node installer could have been a bit clearer regarding the implications of that little checkbox, but that's another story.

Anyway, feel free to close this issue, I'm happy.

[BrunoWinck]

Arrived here with same problem. My goal was to compile some apps, so I naively thought it will chain with downloading libraries and a few scripts. The messages in command line are way too long to be read. Remember it's just an update of nodejs. Windows rebooted without warning ( I had a project open and other things), and again rebooted. Finally failed as above. Messages are way too long and fast to be read.
This was for Nodejs 10.13.0 , on Windows 10 pro.
I think the checkbox was deceptive as per consequences. It should be a completely different package or with several messages box.
I felt trapped like in the times of old Microsoft cascades of updates, KB etc.

[pauby]

@BrunoWinck You might want to add your voice over at nodejs/node#23838 to help those guys out.