For the longest time, my laptop would not install anything unless I booted and tried the install program immediately. It wasn't clear what was going on, but WIndows Installer would appear in Task Manager for some reason. If I forced Windows Installer to "End Task", I could then install a program but this was a real hassle.
In Task Manager, if you right-click Windows Installer, there is an option to "Analyze Wait Chain". This will tell you what msiexec.exe is trying to do, and which program is the culprit.Â
Turned out that Google Earth was the culprit. It kept trying to update and failing.
The "Analyze Wait Chain" feature is a tool that lets you identify the actual process that is resulting in a hung or frozen application. It is available in Windows Task Manager and Resource Monitor.
CTRL-SHIFT-ESC (to open Task Manager) > Details > msiexec.exe > right-click msiexec.exe > Analyze Wait Chain
This will show you a tree of processes and their dependencies. The Analyze Wait Chain tree shows which processes or open nodes in a tree are using or waiting to use a resource used by another process or child nodes in the tree, and is required for the selected process to continue.
https://www.thewindowsclub.com/analyze-wait-chain-traversal