Hi i am having troubles with an installer. The problem is clients have installed my app on a windows 2003 server. They are then using terminal services to all access the program.

Their administrator has to grant each user Administrator access to use the program which they have to do begrudgingly.

Currently

the administrator installs the program "For Everyone" and the program installs fine and runs fine for the administrator.

When the program is installed on XP or Vista and a new user clicks on the shortcut for the first time,a silent installer runs(only on the first time) and the program runs fine.(not sure why it needs to run the installer for each new user?)

But if they do this over terminal service on a windows 2003 machine, users with limited permissions doesn't the right to install the program and the error:

Only administrators have permission to add, remove, or configure server software during a terminal services remote session. If you want to install or configure software on the server, contact your network administrator.

so i log directly on as a user with limited permissions to the windows 2003 machine clicked on the shortcut, the silent installer runs and i get the following error:

File "FilePath"\Setup.msi was rejected by digital signature policy

i ran through this patch http://support.microsoft.com/kb/925336and it doesn't fix the problem as i believe it's a security issue.

So is i could get my installer not to run for each new user this would really solve all the problems i'm having. Whay does the installer need to run for each new user? And is there a way i could get around it?

Or can i get limited users to install programs on windows 2003 without giving them admin permissions?

thanks very much

Hi TheHaggis,

did you find a solution to this problem? While I`m having the same problem.

Regards

JorisRutger

I'm not super familiar with Terminal Server issues... this is one of the first times I've heard of an issue quite like this.

I have some ideas.

One place I'd look at is the design of your deployment. It sounds like maybe you have a mixed installer, where some components are installed per-user, and some are installed per-machine, and if that's the case, it could be causing your issues.

If you convert your install to work either 100% per-machine, and needs to be installed by the Admin, or 100% per-user, and can be installed by a non-admin (i.e. install to non-Program Files locations, etc...), I think you might avoid these problems.

It sounds like the 2nd user is running the app, and invoking the "repair" function, maybe because some regkeys or something were written per-user for the first user, and are missing for the 2nd user.

It could be as simple as just making sure that the installer always installs for Everyone, by setting the project property InstallAllUsers = True, and the InstallAllUsersVisible on the InstallationFolder dialog = False...

I hope this helps.

Good luck, and report your results!

Hi David, thanks you for your reply.

My problem was 99% similar to the problem above, up to message:

"File "FilePath"\Setup.msi was rejected by digital signature policy", which I didn`t get. The rest was the same.

I could reproduce the problem on a "normal" (non-terminal) machine -installing asan administrator and trying to run as a simple user - where my errormessage "no access to prog.files/~/.installstate" was different from the terminal server message ("only administrators ...").

The windows event viewerapplication message however was the same : EventId 1004 & 1001.

"The resource 'HKEY_CURRENT_USER ....... does not exist".

So the terminal server was probably not the problem.

(You already suggested to look @ the deployment design, regkeys)

It appeared that the standard VS2005 project setup, adds a default registry key [software/manufacturer]to the project, which I didn`t use and was not aware of. I removed that reg-entry, and it worked on both the terminal server and my simulation.

Furthermore: I`ve read that setup "Custom Actions" written in managed code are often an issue and not supported by the core MS windows installer team. (if you have problems with your setup, keep this in mind.)

Again, thanx.

Joris Eikelenboom