windows MSI upgrade fails, with installer unable to create the service

[yannK]

While upgrading on windows server, with the MSI installer, the splunkd service creation may fail with "Create Splunk services: Splunk Installer was unable to create Splunk Services"
and a popup " "splunk installer was unable to launch splunk's first time run error code: 1"

The error is also visible on the msi logs in %TEMP%\Splunk-(version).log

 *** _LaunchAppEx: Create process executing: cmd.exe /c ""C:\Program Files\Splunk\bin\splunk.exe" enable boot-start-loop --answer-yes --no-prompt --accept-license >> C:\Users\btester\AppData\Local\Temp\Splunk-108.5.18156.log 2>>&1"

 *** _LaunchAppEx: WaitForSingleObject retval=0, exitCode=1

 *** Create Splunk services: Splunk Installer was unable to create Splunk Services.

[yannK · Accepted solution]

It can be a permission issue or a problem with the service.

The workaround is to remove the service before upgrading :

• make sure to stop splunk, check the service list
• double check the name of the service (should be splunkd)
• delete the service on the command line : sc delete splunkd
• apply the installer as admininstrator