I’m a big fan of using Start-Transcript in my application install wrappers as it provides a very neat and tidy way to capture the output of everything that happens during the installation process and as such, all of the applications I package end up storing log files locally and I passionately and repeatedly urge my support staff to view these log files to identify issues during deployment. However, not everyone has the “read the log files then troubleshoot” mentality, so I find myself having the same conversation over and over…

“The application failed to install. What’s wrong?” “I’m not sure, what do the log files say?” “I haven’t checked them yet…” “…”