Resolving JunOS Pulse install issue on Windows

Edit 2017-12-05: This remains one of the most visited entries on my blog. The notes here do apply to Pulse Secure, and checking the output of pnputil, Pulse Secure did not bother to change the “Driver package provider” string, which means it still reads “Juniper”. Tsk.

On my own Windows 7 machine, I had an odd error when attempting to install JunOS Pulse 5. The installer would start with “copying new files”, then “rolling back action” and would finally tell me that “the wizard was interrupted before JunOS Pulse could be completely installed.”

Usually, when something odd like this happens, the remedy is to uninstall everything Juniper. Which I did. Network Connect, Host Checker, Setup Client, Installer Service, Pulse Collaboration, I got rid of them all. Which didn’t resolve my issue.

Now, this machine has had various versions of Juniper-something installed on it over the years. Even the OAC client at one point. So it was likely that something was lingering that was causing this issue.

I had seen something similar at a customer of mine. They resolved it by re-imagining the machine. I didn’t want to be quite so thorough.

The solution turned out to be to open a command line “as Administrator”, run “pnputil -e > pnplist.txt”, find everything in there that has the name “Juniper” in it, then run “pnputil -d oemXX.inf” for each entry, where “XX” is the actual number of the entry.

This got rid of a lingering driver in the Windows driver store, which was keeping the Pulse driver from being installed. After this little bit of surgery, Pulse installed without complications.

Before reaching for pnputil, be sure that the previous step, uninstalling everything that has to do with Juniper MAG/SA client software, has already been taken. These drivers are components of the client software. Pulling them out from under that client software is not desirable.

I’ve found a forum mention that pnputil helped with a Network Connect install issue where a Juniper driver had gotten orphaned. This remedy is not specific to Pulse alone.