Chocolatey "choco install failed" in CI

By Kaveh Alemi·Latchkey

A choco install step exited non-zero. Chocolatey downloads installers over the network, so failures range from a transient download error to a bad package name or checksum mismatch.

What this error means

choco prints "The install of <pkg> was NOT successful" and exits non-zero, failing the step. It can be intermittent when the cause is a network or community-repo blip, or deterministic for a wrong name.

cmd

Progress: Downloading mytool 1.2.3...
ERROR: The remote file either doesn't exist, is unauthorized, or is forbidden for
url 'https://.../mytool.zip'.
The install of mytool was NOT successful.
Chocolatey installed 0/1 packages. 1 packages failed.

Common causes

Transient download or community-repo failure

Chocolatey fetches binaries at install time. A timeout, rate limit, or temporary 5xx from the source URL makes the install fail through no fault of the package.

Wrong package id or unavailable version

A misspelled id or a pinned version that was unlisted yields a hard, repeatable failure.

Checksum mismatch

If the upstream binary changed, the recorded checksum no longer matches and choco aborts.

How to fix it

Add retries and a longer timeout

Make transient download failures recover instead of failing the job.

cmd

choco install mytool -y --no-progress `
  --execution-timeout=600 `
  --ignore-package-exit-codes=0

Verify the package id and pin a known version

Confirm the exact id and a version that is still listed.

cmd

choco search mytool --exact
choco install mytool --version=1.2.3 -y

How to prevent it

Transient choco download failures are common; on Latchkey managed runners self-healing auto-retries transient install failures so a one-off network blip does not fail the job. Pin package versions and add a retry to harden the step. Windows minutes bill at roughly 2x Linux, so install only what the Windows job truly needs.

Frequently asked questions

What causes ""choco install" failed"?