Installation fails a check

installationdeployment

What you see

The Levee installer stops at once with a message about the Windows version or edition.
The installer runs, then undoes everything near the end, sometimes with "error 1603" (fatal error during installation).
Levee was pushed to your computer by IT, but it never appears in the Start menu.

What you can try

Installing Levee needs administrator rights, so most fixes are for your IT team. You can help them by:

Copying the exact message the installer showed, or taking a screenshot.
Noting your Windows edition and version: open Settings > System > About and look under Windows specifications.
Sending both to your IT team with a link to this page.

Levee needs 64-bit Windows 11 Pro, Enterprise or Education, version 22H2 or later. Windows 11 Home cannot run Levee.

For your IT team

The Levee MSI checks the host in two stages:

Launch conditions, evaluated before anything is written to the machine. These produce a clear dialog (or a log entry in silent mode) and the install never starts.
Host preparation, a step that runs during installation with administrator rights. It checks the Windows build number and the ASP.NET Core 8 runtime, and installs the LeveeFS file-sharing driver. If a check or the driver installation fails, the whole installation is rolled back.

Because Windows Installer discards the output of installation steps, host preparation writes its own log:

Get-Content "$env:SystemRoot\Temp\levee-prepare-host.log" -Tail 40

Every line starts with LEVEE-PREREQ:. A failed check is logged as LEVEE-PREREQ-FAIL: followed by the reason.

"Levee requires 64-bit Windows."

Levee runs on 64-bit (x64) Windows only. Install on a 64-bit Windows 11 machine. See System requirements.

"Levee requires Windows 11 Pro, Enterprise, or Education."

The full message continues: "(The numeric build requirement, 22H2/22621+, is checked by the host-preparation step.)"

The installer accepts these Windows editions: Pro, Pro for Workstations, Pro Education, Enterprise, Enterprise LTSC, and Education. Windows 11 Home is not supported, because it cannot run the Windows Containers feature Levee relies on.

Check the edition of a machine:

(Get-ItemProperty 'HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion').EditionID

If the edition is Core (Home), upgrade the machine to Pro or Enterprise before installing Levee.

Windows build is below 22621 (host-preparation exit code 1)

Log line:

LEVEE-PREREQ-FAIL: Windows build 19045 is below the required 22621 (Windows 11 22H2).

Levee needs Windows 11 version 22H2 (build 22621) or later. Check the build:

[Environment]::OSVersion.Version.Build

Update the machine to a supported Windows 11 release, then run the installer again.

ASP.NET Core 8 runtime not found (host-preparation exit code 6)

Log line (shortened):

LEVEE-PREREQ-FAIL: ASP.NET Core 8 runtime not found (checked: C:\Program Files\dotnet). Levee proxies require it. Install 'ASP.NET Core Runtime 8.x' from https://dotnet.microsoft.com/download/dotnet/8.0

The Levee service and its policy proxies need the ASP.NET Core Runtime 8.x (x64). Install it from dotnet.microsoft.com, or deploy it with your software distribution tool before Levee. Confirm it is present:

Get-ChildItem "$env:ProgramFiles\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.AspNetCore.App" | Select-Object Name

At least one folder must start with 8.. Then run the Levee installer again.

If you install the runtime and Levee back to back in one unattended session, that works: the check looks for the runtime on disk, not on the PATH.

The LeveeFS driver could not be installed

The installer adds the LeveeFS kernel driver (service LeveeFs) and the LeveeFSHost service, which let a sandbox use the files and folders a user shares with a project. If either cannot be installed, the installation rolls back.

If Windows has a restart pending, for example after an earlier Levee update, restart and run the installer again.
Check your antivirus or EDR console: some products block new file-system drivers. See Planning for recommended exclusions.
If it still fails, send Vediram Support the host-preparation log (%SystemRoot%\Temp\levee-prepare-host.log) and the driver installation report under %SystemRoot%\Temp\LeveeFs-<random>\.

Do not retry the installer again and again: each attempt rolls back the same way until the cause is fixed.

Unhandled error (host-preparation exit code 99)

The log ends with LEVEE-PREREQ-FAIL: unhandled exception: and the error text. This is unexpected. Collect the log and the verbose MSI log (below) and open a support request.

"A newer version of Levee is already installed."

Levee does not support downgrades. Uninstall the newer version first, or deploy the newer installer instead. See Updates & uninstall.

The installer rolls back after copying files

After host preparation, the installer verifies the integrity of the bundled container engine. If the engine files on disk do not match their expected checksums (for example, because security software quarantined or altered one of them), the install rolls back on purpose. Check your antivirus or EDR quarantine for files under %ProgramFiles%\Vediram\Levee\engine\, allow them, and install again. See Planning for recommended exclusions.

Capture a verbose installer log

For any failure not covered above, run the installer with full logging from an elevated PowerShell:

msiexec /i .\VediramLeveeSetup.msi /qn /l*v "$env:TEMP\levee-install.log"

Search the log for the first failure:

Select-String -Path "$env:TEMP\levee-install.log" -Pattern 'LEVEE-PREREQ-FAIL|Return value 3' | Select-Object -First 5

If you install through the install-levee.ps1 wrapper, its rotated logs are in %ProgramData%\Vediram\Levee\installer\logs\.

Send both the verbose MSI log and levee-prepare-host.log with your support request. See Collecting logs for support.

After a successful install: Windows Containers

The installer does not turn on the Windows Containers feature. If Levee installs but the app reports "Windows 'Containers' feature is off", see Startup Doctor checks.