Packaged installations may fail for redirected profile paths
Posted: 02 Aug 2008 05:22
This only happens to me at work where domain policy redirects 'My Documents' to '\\server_name\users\profile_name'. This consolidates everyone's profile data for easy backups. I won't argue the pros or cons to this approach; it wasn't my idea. The bottom line is that the approach seems to work well for my organization.
As it turns out, this path is oddly represented in Windows Registry. For example, '[HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-18\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\MountPoints2\##server_name#Users#profile_name#My Documents#Local Definition Storage]'. It's odd enough to make a difference when attempting to run an application installation package from XYplorer versus Windows Explorer.
While such applications install fine from Windows Explorer, they fail to install from XYplorer, generating an alert with the following text: Error 1324. The path My Documents contains an invalid character.
This is not always a problem. Some applications will install just fine. I am not sure why that is. Obviously there is more than one way for an installation package to derive installation paths.
As it turns out, this path is oddly represented in Windows Registry. For example, '[HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-18\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\MountPoints2\##server_name#Users#profile_name#My Documents#Local Definition Storage]'. It's odd enough to make a difference when attempting to run an application installation package from XYplorer versus Windows Explorer.
While such applications install fine from Windows Explorer, they fail to install from XYplorer, generating an alert with the following text: Error 1324. The path My Documents contains an invalid character.
This is not always a problem. Some applications will install just fine. I am not sure why that is. Obviously there is more than one way for an installation package to derive installation paths.