Inventor 2014 not starting as limited user

[joelgb]

I first posted this over the the General Inventor forum but was asked to try here instead. Here is my old post: http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/Inventor-General/Inventor-2014-will-not-open/td-p/4548047

A quick recap of my other post is that I am having trouble launching launching Inventor 2014 as a limited (non-admin) user. In task manager I see an Inventor.exe and an ApprenticeRegSvr.exe*32 process. Both stay idle indefninalty and I am never greated by a splash screen.

I have done some additional troubleshooting since my previous posting and I now believe my issue to be related to Software Restriction Policies and ApprenticeRegSvr.exe.

If I have ANY SRP Policy assciated wtih the workstation in question, Inventor will not run it's first launch wizard the under the limited account. If I remove SRP Policies, Inventor is able to launch, I am then able to re-apply SRP and Inventor will work normally. To test further, I created a new SRP Policy set as Unrestricted and with all "Unrestricted" Rules (Basically enabling SRP as a function, but not allowing it to restrict anything, very much like enabling a firewall and opening every port, sure it's there, but it isn't doing anything.) Even with a wide open SRP Policy, Inventor STILL does not launch as a limited user.
 I believe there to be a bug with ApprenticeRegSvr and SRP where ApprenticeRegSvr doesn't attempt to run (by run I mean do any of the work it is supposed to) if any SRP Policy is enabled. My process monitor traces also point this as procmon shows no registry/file activity from ApprenticeRegSrv.exe, It just creates a thread and never is heard from again.

Does anyone have info on how ApprenticeRegSrv is supposed to work and any ideas of how I can work around this? As a workaround I could temporarily disable SRP on the machine to get past the first run, however my concern is that I don't know all conditions in which ApprenticeRegSrv would be called again. Does it get called ever X number of days? Only of first runs? Does it get called after each Inventor patch/service pack?

Thanks,

Joel

[david.lau]

Can you try running Inventor once with Admin Privileges?   I got this from the Inventor Team.

"We recommend and that is as Local Administrator and run once."  NOTE:  Local Administrator is different from the Domain Administrator account.

This is a solution that I have sent to users before as well.  I am not sure if it applies in your situation.

http://usa.autodesk.com/getdoc/id=TS18138720

[joelgb]

David,

Thanks for the reply.

I always run Inventor once as a local administrator (by right-clicking the Inventor Shortcut and choosing "Run as administrator") after installing.

In my test case, this "fixes" inventor only for the logged in user (which is the administrator). When I log out and log in as a limited/non-admin/normal user since Inventor has never run as this user, It attempt to launch ApprenticeRegSrv as part of the first-run wizard. With Software Restiriction Policies enabled, ApprenticeRegSrv does nothing but hang and Inventor never launches. Remeber that even a wide-open, not blocking anything, SRP Policy produces an ApprenticeRegSrv hang. This is why I believe there is a bug with ApprenticeRegSrv.

The only reason why "Run as Administrator" does not cause this problem is because SRP Policies are not applied at all to programs launched under "Run as Administrator"

The reason launching Inventor this way does not fix my limited user, is once invoked under "run as administartor" my HKEY_Current_User keys are no longer "user" and are now that of the administrator user. As far as Inventor/

ApprenticeRegSrv is concerned, my limited user has never completed the first run wizard. So when I attempt to launch Inventor again, the first run/ApprenticeRegSrv process is launch.

Can you obtain any more information regarding ApprenticeRegSrv for me?

Thanks,

Joel