light.exe : error LGHT0217: Error executing ICE action [root-caused for particular case]

light.exe : error LGHT0217: Error executing ICE action

My builds were cooking fine for years, but something has happened overnight and installer builds (WiX 3.5 based) started to fail on ICE validation:

light.exe : error LGHT0217: Error executing ICE action 'ICE01'. The most common cause of this kind of ICE failure is an incorrectly registered scripting engine. See http://wix.sourceforge.net/faq.html#Error217 for details and how to solve this problem. The following string format was not expected by the external UI message logger: "There is a problem with this Windows Installer package. A DLL required for this install to complete could not be run. Contact your support personnel or package vendor. ".

It is needed to mention that mentioned URL is no longer valid. There are two popular answers on Stackoverflow: disable validation or add account to Administrators. I rejected "Disable validation" workaround immediately. I am running legacy builds, so I have to run as Administrator. I want to quote SouthPark here:

Did I check his privilege? Yes. #SouthPark

— South Park (@SouthPark) September 17, 2015

I.e., all my scripts were running elevated. Googling for an answer did not help.

The problem is root caused to issues with Bit9 security software (which actually slows down systems significantly and Bit9 support is super slow, but it is topic for another post).

Android Studio build fails with “Task '' not found in root project 'android-UniversalMusicPlayer-master'.”

I was playing with UniversalMusicPlayer sample from https://github.com/googlesamples/android-UniversalMusicPlayer and faced with the following error:

Task '' not found in root project 'android-UniversalMusicPlayer-master'

The following fixed the stuff for me:

1. Kill ~/.graddle folder (C:\Users\\.graddle)
2. I have launched gradlew.bat from the root folder. Script did some tricks and now it works for me. 

Solution for MetaTrader's error message "TestGenerator: no ticks generated"

If you will face with error message "TestGenerator: no ticks generated" while using Metatrader's Strategy Tester, please check that date range for the test is correct (go to "Settings" tab and check "from" and "to" dates). Mostlikely, "from" and "to" dates are the same.

Take a brief look on books related to technical analysis of the financial markets:

Error: the Visual C++ Project Engine is not properly installed. The build cannot continue. Please repair the Visual Studio installation

If you got sudden error message "Error: the Visual C++ Project Engine is not properly installed. The build cannot continue. Please repair the Visual Studio installation", then there is quick fix without a need to repair Visual Studio:

1. Go to "[Visual Studio Install Dir]\VC\vcpackages\"
2. regsvr32 VCProjectEngine.dll

Error retrieving address of IopRootDeviceNode

!devnode 0 1 produces "Error retrieving address of IopRootDeviceNode"

This basically means that you have no symbols for your OS version. If you have set to download symbols from msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols, but still getting error, then most probably you are using non-released version of OS and you have to download package with PDBs manually.