InstallShield Tuner - Error: 'Access to Data Denied'

HCL Domino Domino Forum
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I, like others who’ve posted here, am trying to use the InstallShield Tuner that is packaged with Notes 6.5.5 to add a modified Bookmark.ntf to our Lotus Notes install package.

After some initial testing and rolling this out to almost 100 users, we’ve found that the users cannot access any of the files that were included in the transform file.

Like many other companies, our users are not given Admin rights on the PC - Notes is installed by an Admin, then the machine is given back to the user.

Typically the user does have proper permissions to the Lotus folder (and below) - files from the standard install have the permissions inherited from the Data folder as they should, but files installed from the transform file only have System and Administrator access.

Lotus Support pointed me to this technote: which acknowledges the problem, but does not offer a workaround, and they’re closing the ticket.

My question is, has anyone found a workable solution for this issue? Is there an updated (fixed) Installshield Tuner that will work with the R6 .ITW and .MSI files?

My guess is that the Installshield bug has been fixed, but Lotus is continuing to send out the broken version on the install CD, and is not willing to assist.

Ultimately we want to be able to automate the process of installing clients, someday I’d like to actually get all our users off R5 and onto R6!

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Subject: InstallShield Tuner - Error: ‘Access to Data Denied’

Take heart! We were able to accomplish this at the university I am engaged with as a Notes contractor. If you are using AD, you can create a group and then a policy for that group that would have access via the domain and then using login scripts, have that group login into the pc do the upgrade, Once the upgrade has been done, the pc reboots and the user account takes over. What I have seen done is that the user has admin access with domain login, but restricted user access when logging in locally. The admin access can be controlled via group policy as to what privelages they have while logged into the domain. Generally speaking user’s need to have admin access to the Notes directory and sub directories in order for them to have functionality within Notes. As you say they do have. I don’t know all the details of how the MSI and ITW packages were setup as that was done by the Windows guys. But, it has worked here across the various versions of Windows we have here (including NT, Windows ME, 2k and XP SP2). We are upgrading from various versions of the Notes client too (R5, R6.01, R6.54fp2) We are going to R6.5.5 (We have MACs too, but for them we just do sneaker net upgrades as there aren’t that many of them) It has even worked for multi-user setups.

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Subject: RE: InstallShield Tuner - Error: ‘Access to Data Denied’

Thanks for the reply!

The steps you outlined are the ‘someday’ steps we were hopefully going to get to… However, the show stopper is the fact that the user can’t access the files that were included in the install by InstallShield Tuner.

From what you stated it sounds like it is working for you because your users have Admin access - ours do not.

What our Network Admins have done is to give ‘Everyone’ access to the Lotus directory, and by inheritance every directory & file below Lotus - but when 6.5.5 is installed, the files that were added via InstallShield Tuner are not properly inheriting permissions from the directory; only the files in the original install (.cab) are properly inheriting.

For the time being the only workaround I have is to ditch the customized install, and go back to the button-agent to do the custom install work.

It’s just very depressing that Lotus keeps adding features that they won’t support or fix.

I think we might go ahead and try to push out the standard intall, if we can, and see what happens. Thanks again, Rick!

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Subject: RE: InstallShield Tuner - Error: ‘Access to Data Denied’

Sounds like a group policy (AD) issue. We found we had to add the group to the local machine’s admin group to get it to work. And the permissions had to filter down along with that. We found that (due to a security group error!) when that group was removed from the local admin group. In our case: “NUNET.DESKADM” with full administrative privelages. IBM/Lotus won’t support this because it is a Windows permissions issue. We also created and agent the user can click on (Actions menu) to upgrade the design of the database once it is upgraded to 6.5.5. But, take heart Mark; once you are up to 6 you will be able to make use of the smart upgrade from within Domino itself. So, you only have to endure this pain once. Good Luck!

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Subject: RE: InstallShield Tuner - Error: ‘Access to Data Denied’

As I understand it, the problem actually stems from a bug in the InstallShied Tuner - files from within the .cab file (original Notes package) install with the correct permissions, files added to the .MST via the InstallShield Tuner do not install with the correct permissions. Both InstallShield and Lotus document this as a known issue with that version of IST, and that it is fixed in a later release of InstallShield Tuner, in fact the version that is included on the Domino 7 CD.

The reason that Lotus/IBM should support it, is because this is a known issue, but Lotus continues to ship the buggy/broken/bad version of InstallShield Tuner, and even thought they pointed me to the ‘fixed’ version , they acknowledge that the files that they include on the 6.5.x CD won’t work with the new version of the tuner.

You can’t get (free) support from InstallShield, becuase it’s an OEM version that is licensed to lotus, and Lotus is responsible to support it.

Catch 22

In other words, it’s a Windows Permissions error >>NOW<<, but it was caused by the install that was generated with the known bad/buggy/broken tool that Lotus provided to create said install.

Smart Upgrade (also) won’t work, because, once again, the user is not a power user, and does not have permission to install software; the software must be installed by a user with Admin rights on the PC. This issue has also been documented many times here and by Lotus Support.

Bottom line, we’re giving up the process; and we’ll just have to go back to manual installs.

We’ve got approx 100 users with files that they don’t have permissions to that we have to manually clean up.

The real problem is, that while I might only have to endure THIS pain once (because I’ll never try it again) I still have previous pains that we haven’t recovered from yet.

Administering this small of a domain should not be a full time job.