an error occurred during the installation of assembly component {97F81AF1-0E47-DC99-A01F-C8B3B9A1E18E - 0x80070308

i encountered this error when i was running an installation of visio 2007.  after doing a search, i found this blog entry that described the same problem.  i concur with scott hanselm.  this is a really lousy error.

the blog entry itself doesn’t describe how to track down the problem.  however, in a comment, michael grier indicates exactly where to look.

in summary, you want to do the following:

• navigate to %windor%\logs\cbs
• inside this directory, find the “cbs.log” file and open it
• from the bottom up, search for the “(F)”

in my case, this is what i found.

2009-04-24 09:30:21, Error                 CSI    000000b3 (F) A previous transaction requested a reboot, so you cannot commit any transactions until you reboot.

oh, so that’s all it is?  i just needed to reboot and clear out the pending changes first.