If you've worked creating MSI installers (for example with WiX) and you've built a "silent installer" (one without GUI or wizards), sometimes the error message box or looking at the Windows Event Log is not enough to discern why the installer failed.
A simple way of logging a detailed verbose of the install process to a file is to use msiexec.exe tool (included in Windows), as in this example:
msiexec /l*v mysampleinstaller.msi c:\msiexeclog.txt
"/l*v" will log and verbose all install info to a txt file, allowing you to see where the problem was.
Small but simple to troubleshoot errors or problems with your installers :)