[Todd Madson]

I'm posting this here because nobody in the PC world seems to understand what's
happening and I figure this forum has been useful before so:

Dell Latitude D630 laptop with Vista Business installed. My company bought scads
of them so I get to develop the image for it.

The regular employees who get them will get XP - I developed the image for that
one from scratch since there IS no XP factory image for that machine.

The IT folks are getting Vista. We don't necessarily want it since it's a pain
filled with all kinds of problems.

Here's the stats:

Dell D630, Core2Duo 7600 2.2 ghz with 2 gigs ram
80 gig 7200 rpm drives with dual layer DVD burners.

Logged in to the administrator account.
User Access Control = switched off.
Network discovery = on.
Operating system = activated thru Microsoft.
Symantec Antivirus v10.2 corporate ed (Vista version) = installed.

Certain applications (Office 2003/2007) when attempting to install
produce a progress bar that STOPS at 0% and stays there as long
as you care to let it go.

I'm this close to reimaging the damn thing from scratch and starting
all over, there's no immediately easy way to force install the bigger
apps and they all hang up. Some of the small ones (real estate
specific) as well.

Did a malware scan, no viruses, no trojans, nothing that would cause
problems.

I can't even run Windows update for some reason - it sits and spins its
wheels showing the "cylon" display endlessly.

Ideas?

[reader50]

I'm not a Windows expert by any stretch of the imagination. If this were a Mac, I'd suspect either disk damage, or that permissions need repair. Perhaps you could log in as root to do the app installs, then reset their permissions as needed afterwards.

[ghporter]

I agree with reader50. One problem I've had with a number of Windows app installers is that they demand being in the foreground, and wind up hiding notifications and error messages, so I'd see if that progress bar for Office, for example, is hiding an authentication window asking you to allow the installation as an admin of that machine. A fix would be to run the installer AS the admin, either by invoking elevation at startup, or through manipulating the command line of the installer before running it.

[Todd Madson]

That's the problem:

I'm logged in as the administrator.
User access control is off.
Network discovery is on.

In the time since then I've discovered that the Problem Reports and Solutions utility
claims that the Installshield Wizard Setup utility is not compatible with Vista and
there is no solution.

THIS is a terrible showstopper. If this is indeed the case not only will I be unable
to install windows update but most programs that are produced by software developers.

The operating system never should have shipped if this was the case - I've never seen
this on another Vista system and I've set up about 60-80 systems so far.

Something with the image they placed on the drives, maybe it was a beta or something.

I'll post back if I get a solution since this is a disaster.

[chabig]

Originally Posted by Todd Madson 

Dell Latitude D630 laptop with Vista Business installed.

Isn't the problem obvious?

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by chabig 

Isn't the problem obvious?

Not terribly helpful...

If the installer isn't compatible, you're stuck. But are you saying that the Office installer is an InstallShield app? I'm confused.

[chabig]

I'd suggest reinstalling Vista from scratch.

[rem]

Are you able to go into the dir where the individual installers are for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and install them one by one?