Installation & Licensing

[#1]

We have been getting this error occasionally come into support and when it finally happened on my computer, I decided to go though the solution and confirm that it does work.

When you try to uninstall an AutoCAD based product, you will get the following error:

Error 1402.  Could not open key: 
UNKNOWN\Components\Hex#\Hex#.  Verify that you have sufficient access to that key, or contact your support personnel.

The solution is to change the permissions of the following folder in the Registry:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\UserData\S-1-5-18\Components

1. Right Click on Components select permissions.
2. Click Advanced button.
3. Select the Owner Tab
4. Under Change owner to:  Select Administrators (Group) and Click Apply.
5. Then Select Check box Replace owner on subcontainers and objects and Click Apply.
6. Go to the Permissions tab, select the Check box:  Replace all child objects Permissions with inheritable permissions from this object and Click apply.  NOTE:  The wording maybe a bit different depending on your operating system.

I have included a video on changing the permissions in Windows Vista & Windows 7.

[#2]

Hi!

Why does this happen in the first place?

We had this happen by deleting the installationfiles from the install folder IMMEDIATLY AFTER the setup.exe returned, but there where still some parts of the install running which were launched by setup.exe.

So the setup itself returned but not all started install tasks were finished. REALLY BAD design!

Trying to just rerun the setup always failed with strange 'unable to install anchor service' errors which were caused by the '1402' errors during the installation because of messed up permissions by the prior (failed) installation.

I would suggest you create a better and more resilient installation routine to prevent stuff like this from happening in the first place. Only tackling the symptoms does not help in the long run.

Overall Autodesk software installation is still a PITA, but has improved over the years - Which does not mean that it is good right now, only shows how utterly horrible it has been in the past. Still a long way to go...

[#3]

I value your opinion.  This post was only meant to help solve a problem.

[#4]

I started having issues with this aftern uninstalling all Autodesk products from a Windows 7 64 bit computer to reinstall clean.   I was trying to reinstall a package created on the server.  What I did was drilled down to the actual base .msi install package and started the install this way.  As a result, when there was an error on a class key, I deleted the class key altogether.  Then I hit retry and it recreated it and continued on.

It seems as though the Autocad installer balks when it tries to create a registry key that already exists.

 Incidentally, changing the permissions on the keys had no effect.

[#5]

After making the suggested changes this is what happens when I hit APPLY

Registry Editor could not set owner on the key currently selected, or some of its subkeys.

How can I proceed from here?

[#6]

Try it a few times.  If that doesn't work, go down and find each individual key that it cannot change and make the changes there.

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/item?siteID=123112&id=16508079&linkID=9240617

[#7]

Went ahead and did a complete re-install of the OS.

Thanks for the suggestions.