Microsoft KB Archive/818241

= Microsoft Office 2003 chained installation is not successful with Prefix form of secure transform =

Article ID: 818241

Article Last Modified on 2/12/2007

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APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003
 * Microsoft Office Basic Edition 2003
 * Microsoft Office Small Business Edition 2003
 * Microsoft Office Standard Edition 2003
 * Microsoft Office Student and Teacher Edition 2003

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SYMPTOMS
When you try to run a chained installation of Microsoft Office 2003, the chained programs may not be installed successfully. You chain the installation packages or executable files of additional programs to the Office Setup.ini file, but the chained programs may not be installed.

A chained installation is typically run in quiet mode with the /q switch. In quiet mode, you do not receive an error message when this problem occurs. However, if you run the chained installation without the /q switch, you receive the following error message:

Error applying transforms. Verify that the specified transform paths are valid.



CAUSE
This problem occurs if you use the Prefix form of a secure transform by including an at sign (@) or a pipe symbol (|) as the first character in the path of the .mst file.

If you append an at sign to the name of the .mst file to indicate a relative path secure transform, the at sign is treated as part of the .mst file name. Therefore, the transform is not found.

If you append a pipe symbol to the path of the .mst file to indicate a secure transform, Setup.exe does not recognize it as a full path transform. The transform is treated as a relative path transform with the pipe symbol as the first character. Setup.exe appends the current path of the source location of the primary install to a relative path transform. The result is a path that is not valid. The transform is not found.



WORKAROUND
To work around this problem, use the Property form of Secure Transforms. To do this, add the TRANSFORMSSECURE property; do not reference the .mst file with an at sign or a pipe symbol. In the Chained install section of the Setup.ini file, add TRANSFORMSSECURE=1 to the current CmdLine= line. To do, use the following examples.

Example 1
Instead of the following

[ChainedInstall_1]

path=\\AppServer\Office11\Pro11.MSI

mst=@accounting.mst

tasktype=msi

cmdline=REBOOT=Suppress

use the following:

[ChainedInstall_1]

path=\\AppServer\Office11\Pro11.MSI

mst=accounting.mst tasktype=msi

cmdline=REBOOT=Suppress TRANSFORMSSECURE=1

Example 2
Instead of the following

[ChainedInstall_1]

path=\\AppServer\Office11\Pro11.MSI

mst=|\\AppServer\Office11\Custom\accounting.mst tasktype=msi

cmdline=REBOOT=Suppress

use the following:

[ChainedInstall_1]

path=\\AppServer\Office11\Pro11.MSI

mst=\\AppServer\Office11\Custom\accounting.mst tasktype=msi

cmdline=REBOOT=Suppress TRANSFORMSSECURE=1



STATUS
Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed in the &quot;Applies to&quot; section.



MORE INFORMATION
A chained installation is typically run in quiet mode with the /q switch. In quiet mode, you do not receive an error message, but you can check the log files to see where the error occurred. For example, the following is an extract from the log file when the full path of the .mst file was specified as mst=@test.mst:

MSI (c) (D0:80): Machine policy value 'TransformsSecure' is 1 MSI (c) (D0:80): Looking for secure file transform: MSI (c) (D0:80): Note: 1: 2343 MSI (c) (D0:80): Unable to create a temp copy of transform ''. MSI (c) (D0:80): Note: 1: 2203 2: 3: -2147287037 MSI (c) (D0:80): Couldn't find cached transform. Looking for it at the original location. MSI (c) (D0:80): Looking for secure file transform: \\appserver\office11\@test.mst MSI (c) (D0:80): Note: 1: 2318 2: appserver\office11\@test.mst MSI (c) (D0:80): Unable to create a temp copy of transform '\\appserver\office11\@test.mst'. MSI (c) (D0:80): Note: 1: 2203 2: \\appserver\office11\@test.mst 3: -2147287038 MSI (c) (D0:80): Note: 1: 2729 DEBUG: Error 2203: Database: appserver\office11\@test.mst. Cannot open database file. System error -2147287038 1: 2203 2: \\appserver\office11\@test.mst 3: -2147287038 Error applying transforms. Verify that the specified transform paths are valid. \\appserver\office11\@test.mst MSI (c) (D0:80): MainEngineThread is returning 1624

For another example, the following is an extract from the log file when the full path of the .mst file was specified as mst=|\\appserver\office11\custom\test.mst:

MSI (c) (24:E4): Machine policy value 'TransformsSecure' is 0 MSI (c) (24:E4): User policy value 'TransformsAtSource' is 0 MSI (c) (24:E4): Looking for file transform: \\appserver\office11\|\appserver\office11\custom\test.mst MSI (c) (24:E4): Note: 1: 1314 2: \\appserver\office11\|\appserver\office11\custom MSI (c) (24:E4): Unable to create a temp copy of transform '\\appserver\office11\|\appserver\office11\custom\test.mst'. MSI (c) (24:E4): Note: 1: 2203 2: \\appserver\office11\|\appserver\office11\custom\test.mst 3: -2147286788 MSI (c) (24:E4): Note: 1: 2729 DEBUG: Error 2203: Database: \\appserver\office11\|\appserver\office11\custom\test.mst. Cannot open database file. System error -2147286788 1: 2203 2: \\appserver\office11\|\appserver\office11\custom\test.mst 3: -2147286788 Error applying transforms. Verify that the specified transform paths are valid. \\appserver\office11\|\appserver\office11\custom\test.mst MSI (c) (24:E4): MainEngineThread is returning 1624

For more information about secure transforms, visit the following Microsoft Web site: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa371577.aspx

For more information about the TRANSFORMSSECURE property, visit the following Microsoft Web site: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa372088.aspx

For more information about Windows Installer technologies, visit the following Microsoft Web site: http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsServer/en/library/599ae32d-df3b-46bc-ada2-73d64846e7841033.mspx?mfr=true

Keywords: kbdeployment kbsetup kbsecurity kbwindowsinstaller kbprb KB818241

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