Yes, I tried it. I know it won't work, but I feel up for some bug-squashing right now, and this is the program I want to use the most. For convenience's sake, I need to test the app on both Linux and macOS; I will indicate which one I am using when I post. However, the Visual Studio Installer is an entire application in its own right, with its own traditional installer. To avoid confusion, I will refer to the product being installed here as the application. The products that the application installs will be called by their proper names. As such:
Linux Win10 x64 bottle with third-party msstyles. The first-stage installer unpacks and launches the second-stage, real installer. The second-stage installer locks up, and then quits. I see in Wine's terminal output that the installer is trying to open the device "\??\Z:\". This is a rather convoluted way to indicate the absolute path to the root of Z:. Wine misinterprets the path as being to a Linux device, which it cannot open due to lack of root privileges. The program is trying to retrieve the volume's volume label and serial number to show to the user; presumably free disk space would be the next thing queried. (Note that the Z: path element is just another directory in this context; many other kinds of objects can exist under \??.)
CrossOver's copy of Wine is not supposed to be modified, and I am not nearly as experienced a Wine developer as the CrossOver team is. This rules out trying to fix the problem myself. Therefore, how would I communicate these kind of bug to them with enough detail so they would be able to put it on the backlog? Thanks!