Software Deployment

I am trying to do an admin install for Reuters 3000 Xtra 5.1.

I have vendor msi and about 10 msp's. I can do manual install of the msi and th msp's with no issues.

According to their documentation i can do admin install and create a single installation point.

msiexec /a <path to CD>/Reuters 3000 Xtra Suite.msi

msiexec /a <path to shared drive>/Reuters 3000 Xtra Suite.msi /p Reuters 3000 Xtra
Suite 5.1 Update 1.msp

I can update all 7 update msp's, however i also have 3 hot fixes in msp format. when i try to do an update to the first hotfix msp i get an error "Upgrade patch cannot be installed by the windows installer service because the program to upgraded may be missing, or the upgrade patch may be different version of the program"

I can do an installation of this hotfix msp is the application is installed, only admin update is causing a problem.
Tried calling Reuters, they are looking for an answer........

Thank you for the help....