“A Setup Package is either missing or damaged” error while installing Visual Studio 2015 on Windows 10

Question

During the installation of Visual Studio 2015 Community on Windows 10 the following error occurred for me:

A Setup Package i

Answer 1

I may have found the correct walkthrough to get this working.

This is from the page HERE and is not what I came up with myself. Though I did add the VC_redist x86/x64 downloads to the list.

Let me add that I started the update .exe file in run as administrator so you may want to as well.

I got it to work - when it asks you to locate "preparation.exe" or "kb2703187.msp":

1.Open Chrome NOT Internet Explorer - for some @#$*! reason IE doesn't work (at least for me). Though it worked for me in IE11 - Stealthrt

2.Download the file from one (or all) of the links below --> to a "known folder":

preparation.exe --> HERE

kb2703187.msp --> HERE

VC_redist.x64.exe --> HERE

VC_redist.x86.exe --> HERE

Now, go back to the installer and browse to the "known folder" to locate the file you just downloaded

Downloading these files and selecting it in the Please provide a location.. box worked fine for me. I had to reference all 4 files above in order to get it to install.

But I did end up missing some updates:

Answer 2

Run as administrator and just keep clicking download from internet. I had to click it 50 times or so and EVENTUALLY it completes. (5-7 clicks per package)

Answer 3

I also had this problem. But I noticed that the problem occured only when I opened a new user ( not admin ). I made the user admin and it worked fine. You should try it, I think that is the sollution to your problem.

Answer 4

i apologize up front: this is not going to directly answer the OP's question, but when i searched around for "a setup package is either missing or damaged" while trying to offline-install (from unpacked ISO) VS2105 on my (corporate, internet-starved) build server, there were lots of others with same problem with very little help, and this was the top 1 google hit for that dreaded error message...

here's the deal: i was setting up TFS build agent on corporate server with all kinds of security lock down (including access to internet) from an MSDN subsription VS2015w/U3 ISO (unpacked). ran installer - got the error. after rifling through not-so-helpful SO/MS Connect/etc postings, i was able to glean that the digital signatures on some of the sub-packages were failing validation.

if you know anything about PKIs, read this paragraph if you want, if not skip. there was mention that certain CRLs and CA chains were pushed out via Windows updates/patches. who knows if this server has been patched... it certainly could not do it through automatic win updates. in a nut shell, i needed some way to get those missing items so that the digital signature verification would pass. i thought to myself "why would it work on my local machine, because it is on the same patching schedule as the server (presumably, i don't know for sure)". then it occurred to me that one reason MS offers web installers is just this problem... it then occurred to me that they might have a "best effort" kind of strategy for resolving this kind of thing in their offline installer.

(preface: bear in mind that while this worked in a fairly common corporate set up, they're all different and this might not work for everyone)

what i needed was the ability to run the installer on the server, but somehow get it internet access. so i opened Fiddler, allowed other machines to connect to it, configured the server's internet connection settings >> LAN settings to use my machine as a proxy. first make sure that HTTPS is enabled in Fiddler, then open it up, turn in on, go back to your server (that you configured to proxy via your machines IP address and the port that Fiddler uses; default is 8888) and run the installer. you can actually watch the PKI activity in the request captured by Fiddler, among other http-based traffic). the key of this proxy approach is that the server can get what it need from the web, while all that traffic appears to be coming from your machine, from the network firewall's point of view.

anyhow, i hope this saves someone else the 2 days of pain it caused me.

Answer 5

I had the same problem with installing VS 2015 Community. In my case the solution was to download the offline installer (ISO image, ~3,7 GB), mount the image and run vs_community.exe with administrative rights.

Answer 6

I solved the specific issue of missing or corrupted redistributables by doing the following:

• go to Microsoft Certificates
• start certmgr.ms
• open Trusted Root Certification Authorities
• check installed ms certificates with the ones in Microsoft Certificates
• download and import missing ones

This got me past the missing or corrupted packages message.