Going through the process of a "Custom" install with 4.8.1 or 4.8.2, having placed my skin and container zip files in the correct "Install" folders, if I select to install those skins/containers during the custom install (by checking their checkboxes), the dnn install always throws a null reference exception. It does not give me any additional information. I work around the issue by unchecking the boxes and then later manually uploading/installing the skins/containers after the site has been created via Host -> Skins, without error. These are skins/containers that I've been using for some time, installing successfully with several 4.5.3 instances.

There's no stack trace given (or at least I don't know where I might find one). How can I go about finding the cause of this problem? The fact that I did not have any problems in 4.5.3, and the fact that I can upload/install and use the skins/containers without any problem via Host -> Skins has me thinking there's a problem with the DNN site install code.

There is no record of the exception in the DNN Event Viewer. Based on the fact that the skins/containers installation takes place right after the authentication providers installation, these are the items in the event log (oldest to newest) from the installation of the last authentication provider to the point I logged in to look at the event log:

1. Host

Hmmm... yeah, not sure what happened with that. Let's try again.

1. Host