Scripting

We use a not often mentioned solution to deploy software to our machines, and have a very small percentage (~3%), that fail with the exit code of 1618 because another installation is already in progress.  This typically occurs for machines that have been off the network for a period of time, that requires the antivirus update process to install a new version.  So, the process more or less goes like this...

Machine boots and logs in to network

AV update check occurs, starts to download/install

Software Delivery program performs job check, starts to download/install updates

AV software continues to progress and succeeds, software delivery program fails occassionaly because another installation is in progress.

I'm thinking what I could do is write a pre-flight step in our scripts, to check for msiexec.exe as a running process - if found, pause for a period of time and then re-attempt (and loop this for some reasonable amount of time).

With the failure rate so low, I'm not overly concerned - our support staff receives e-mails with verbose logs attached to these e-mails so failures can be remediated, but I try to be proactive to reduce unnecessary intervention.

I'm guessing others have come across this before - just wondering if there may be a better way to do this, or if others have taken this similar approach and what your results have been.