I was working on an AIR application for a golf tournament when this error popped up when I tried installing my application. “The application could not be installed because the AIR file is damaged.” That didn’t give me much information about what the problem was. After a couple hours of looking through my code, looking at the descriptor file, making changes here and there, and trying to install repeatedly only to get the same error everytime, I finally found a post on the subject on the web.
http://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FB-10582
It turns out that my “Texas A&M” asset files that I included in the AIR project was the cause of the problem because it contains the “&” in the file name. Once I removed the file from the AIR project, it installed fine. So then I renamed my file and took out the “&”, and it worked fine as well. So just remember to check your file names for all assets if this error ever pops up. I would think that flex builder should catch this error when it packages up the AIR app.
One more note, when creating your install badge, you’ll need to put the absolute path to your .air application in the flashvars for “appurl”.
More Info at: http://www.tonynorcross.com/?p=13
