Software Deployment

There could be so many reasons that error is happening. Do you have an eventlog entry from MSIEXEC in the application log for the app? Have you turned on all MSI logging via the registry and looked at the MSI log?

Just a suggestion here.. Perhaps if there is an application you are deploying to only that group, you could put that shortuct within the msi or an mst for that application.

Second suggestion.. I manage all of our shortcuts using Startup scripts (VBscript). Most of my applications I have either tweaked the MSI directly or made an MST file for, but for some legacy apps or other special cases a few simple If/Then and fs.CopyFile statements get the job done pretty quick.

I suspect that this might be a permissions issue.

In most cases a normal user would not have rights to write anything to the AllUsers folder.

You might also like to check that you have set the Windows Installer service to install with "Elevated Rights" in both the Computer and User settings policies

I have a similar problem in my organization, and I do have "Install with elevated privileges" configured in both the user and computer configuration. I have one MSI (a custom keyboard made with Microsoft's Keyboard Layout Creator) that fails the installation when trying to install from Add/Remove Programs. If the user just goes directly to the MSI itself and tries to install, it says "Installation incomplete." I have another MSI that I made with InstallShield for RealPlayer that also fails when trying to install from Add/Remove Programs, but runs fine with no errors when the user runs the MSI from the network share. What gives? The only thing I can think of is that the installer wants to write something to a protected part of the filesystem or the registry when you try to install from Add/Remove Programs, that it DOESN'T try to do when you install directly from the network share. That explains RealPlayer, but still doesn't explain the custom keyboard. I must also mention that the custom keyboard installs fine for administrators, so it's not the MSI file that the Keyboard Layout Creator creates. Oh, and there is virtually no support for the Keyboard Layout Creator on Microsoft's site, I checked.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,
JR Jones

Jaradel

Its got to be permissions then. If an admin can install without error and a user cant....its 99.999999% permissions.

I just thought of something else. Make sure your HKCU keys are all in 1 component and not mixed with HKLM and HKCR keys. Your HKCU keys might be trying to write in User context and because their is HKLM etc in there....they fail because users dont have the rights to the other keys.

Just a maybe.