Autocad LT 2020 installation errors on Win 10 but not Win 7

[etippelt]

I am working on a deployment of Autocad LT 2020 to existing machines which may or may not already have Autocad 2019 installed.  Our control script attempts to remove any older versions of Autocad LT but I have been unable to locate any information on how to silently uninstall Autodesk Licensing.  I have used the installation commands and sequence recorded in the SCCM deployment information folder to manage the install, and this consistently fails on Windows 10 when running the command line:

"<path>\Img\x86\AdskLicensing\AdskLicensing-installer.exe" --mode unattended --unattendedmodeui none

The error code returned is 1.  Unfortunately, this command line does not have any logging capability included, unlike all the MSI installation commands, so there is no useful clue as to what exactly is failing.

The test VMs are running the latest builds and updates for both Win 7 and Win 10, with Win 10 being on 1809 major build level.

What I need is the full list of command line switches for AdskLicensing-installer.exe including any silent uninstall switches in case the error is caused by a previous version being already installed.

Thanks in advance for any help in this matter!

[SCHelpdesk]

I will do - it might be a couple of days before I get to that point but I'll try and get it ready ASAP. I do know that SCCM uses the SYSTEM account to install software hence why I added that user to the symlink policy. My test install was just run as a standard admin user.

[SCHelpdesk]

So to clarify, so far I have:

Updated the symlink policy to include a couple of our admin groups as well as "NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM" and "Administrator". The policy applies to all our PCs fairly high up the AD hierarchy.

This has finally enabled me to:

Successfully manually install AutoCAD by running Setup.exe and clicking "Install".

Successfully manually install a deployment by creating a silent deployment, running cmd as an admin user and running ".\Img\Setup.exe /W /q /I Img\AutoCAD 2020.ini /language en-us"

Next step is to upload the deployment to our deployment point and create an SCCM application to deploy to a test PC. I'll try and get that done by tomorrow afternoon.

[fenton.webb]

Good work guys solving this one. I had assumed earlier the setup installer was automatically being granted Administrator privileges because I learned that we had already addressed something similar in an update.

For what it's worth, AutoCAD 2020 has a new Administrator level install requirement, not just because of the mklink but also because we changed the licensing system to use a Windows Service architecture from a Per-Application-process architecture.

[etippelt]

Hi Fenton,

The problem is not solved, at least from my perspective, and I suspect that when the install is tried using SCCM it may also fail.  From my investigations, the mklink command only works when run using the Administrator account, and does not work when installed using the localsystem account, which is what SCCM, and other mainstream deployment systems use for installation.

To recap, I have taken the SCCM installation steps and coded them exactly as specified in the files that are included in the deployment folders when you create an "admin install point". The install works on Win 7 but not on Win 10, and the offending install is the licensing program.  Can I ask whether the installation of Autocad LT 2020 has actually been tested on Win 10/1809 using a deployment system such as SCCM?  This is NOT running as Administrator and that is where I believe the problem lies.

I have coded around the problem using the Microsoft (SysInternals)  junction64.exe utility to create the symbolic link after the licensing install fails, but it would appear that the licensing install normally does something else, installation wise, after the attempt to create the symbolic link. So my next move is to capture the entire install of the licensing utility on Windows 7, and determine what goes on during a successful install so I can reverse engineer this for Windows 10.  As the source of ACad LT 2020 came from a colleague of mine within Oxford University, I would also like to ask whether there is a direct download location for the latest and greatest fully patched version of the 2020 installation source, so that I can verify if, despite evidence to the contrary, I am not running the latest release in my testing.

Cheers

EdT

[etippelt]

SCHelpdesk - just in case you have not noticed, there is an SMS_SCCM scripts folder in the deployment image that contains the full list of installation steps all ready to copy and paste.  This includes individual logging of all the MSI installs and the c:\windows\temp folder should contain other logs pertaining to the license installer. Although it should be possible to install the whole shooting match with a single command, using separate commands is a lot easier to troubleshoot.  In my case, I have preceded the install operations with remove operations if an older version of LT is present.

[fenton.webb]

Hi EdT

if you were not prompted with an update/sp from within setup, then you have the latest version.

About testing, I know that we fully test all the features of AutoCAD setup on all the different flavors of Windows, but I'm not sure we test all of the possible SCCM configurations along with those flavors of Windows, also.

As I mentioned before, AutoCAD 2020 requires Administrator installation privileges now (because of the new 2020 Licensing module) so it makes sense to me that setup fails if somehow Administrator privileges are not propagated, but obviously this is a real problem for you with your SCCM setup. If it were me, I would probably contact Microsoft about the specific issue to see if they can shed light on the problem...

[etippelt]

Hi Fenton,
We don't use SCCM ourselves, but a superior product from Symantec.
However, both use the localsystem account for deployment and as far as I
am aware,
other distribution systems do exactly the same as localsystem has higher
privileges than Administrator.
Yes, the problem is possibly due to Microsoft, but this is not the first
time that software vendors have had to work around
MS problems. Just last month MS released windows updates incompatible
with a long list of antivirus programs leading many A/V vendors to
rush out patches as MS is unable to respond quickly to such issues.
Hence as a responsible software vendor, I would have expected Autodesk
to have taken a bit of time to investigate this issue and determine
whether a simple code change would solve the issue. It is not that
difficult to emulate the behaviour of a localsystem install using
a utility such as psexec (from SysInternals, now Microsoft) or paexec (a
freely licensed equivalent).
Anyway, I do understand I cannot get any further support from Autodesk
so I will continue to work on reverse engineering your licensing
utility in order to fix the issue myself.

Best wishes
Ed

[jjmvandijk]

Hello,

I've got exactly the same issue as Ed. Difference is that I am deploying with RES AM under a SYSTEM account

Regards,

Jeroen

[etippelt]

Hi Jeroen,
As far as I am aware, there is no difference, as sometimes it is called
a system account and sometimes it is called a localsystem account,
but the actual permissions are the same.

Just for the record, could you confirm the operating system and build
number?

Cheers
EdT

[jjmvandijk]

Hi Ed,

I am using windows 10 build 1607.

Regards,

Jeroen

[SCHelpdesk]

My SCCM deployment has installed. I am met with another issue (https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/autocad/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/AutoCA...) but I can correct that by not installing the support content to Program Files apparently. Why the option exists if it doesn't work is a discussion for another time.

I have attached the Software Centre install status as well as my "Create symbolic links" policy settings - the red line covers the names of two internal AD groups that contain staff and local admins but I think the SYSTEM account is the one that allows SCCM to do it's thing in this case.

[SCHelpdesk]

If you don't use the symlink poicy at all, I believe the default behaviour is any admin can create a symlink so adding SYSTEM would only be required if that policy is configured without it currently.

[etippelt]

The default would appear to be Administrators only on Win 10.
On leave today so will return to this on Monday next.

[Anonymous]

Interesting issue - LT 2020 installed without errors on Win 10 but when Autocad LT is started, it displays the login dialog and then if you enter your details or if you cancel, it always displays "License Error" - "The license manager is not functioning or is improperly installed. AutoCAD LT will shut down now"

Losing the will to live over this badly written junk software.

[fenton.webb]

Hi Edward

the software requires a login to access the licensing system and aborts the product if it cannot get a valid login, but I agree the messaging isn't very clear for this fact. We will try and address this for you in a future release.

[Anonymous]

Fenton - thank you for clarifying. Let's hope that the developers listen to users and do think seriously about making the product more informative to the user. When you end up spending several days trying to deploy a flawed product, it is easy to conclude all other issues encountered are also down to bad design.  As you can see from this thread, there are certainly some deployment issues that your developers need to address, and one of them should be to either remove the requirement to create junctions during the install, or at least make every one of your installation components MSI based so that deployment packagers can fix the issues your developers missed or did not think of.

Anyway, the good news is that I was able to get our installation system to deploy ACad LT 2020, although for reasons I gave up trying to figure out, it does not work in our "self install" system which also uses a system account for installation.

[ted_kovacs]

These posts have been helpful.  We aren't using SCCM but a simple batch file that quietly installs AutoCAD with the customized ini file.  All our machines are Windows 10 and they get the same "AdskLicensing/9.0.1.1462: You do not have sufficient privilege to perform this operation" error.  We tried enabling the SYSTEM to create symbolic links but that doesn't work for us.  

[ted_kovacs]

Please share the details of how you are creating the current folder and copying the contents it needs during the middle of the install.  This would seem like the only viable approach for us given that we are running the installation (the setup.exe) silently from a group policy computer startup script as we have done with many versions over the years.  

[Anonymous]

Hi Ted,

We have speculated whether the issue with system deployment may also involve the setting "Interact with desktop".

Our installation options are twofold - one is a "managed" deployment using a system account without any desktop interaction (The Altiris DS and SMP servers), and the other is a "Self Install" where users can trigger the install of the app using a non admin account, and the app is installed by a system we wrote that uses a service and paexec (free equivalent of the Sysinternals psexec ) to deploy the app, using a system account that interacts with desktop.

I basically use a modified version of the SMS scripts that are created as part of the installation when you choose to create an installation source during initial ACAD LT 2020 install.  In all cases, the source files for the install are first copied to a local folder on the target workstation that exists to hold the installation sources for all apps deployed.

Since the deployment works fine for the managed install scenario, and we have only 15 users of this software, there is no point in wasting more time creating a workaround for the bad choices made by Autodesk developers.  What I can report is that the installation log for the licensing program suggests that the junction is created at the end of the install, so I added some code to our install which looks for the error exit code when the junction creation fails, and creates the junction using my own code.  This then results in an error in the Acad.msi that follows as it is unable to find version.ini and another file I cannot recall at this moment.  I was going to investigate this further but our costs did not justify further manpower on this task, where the audience is only 15.  The interesting thing I also observed in testing, is that if I created the junction point BEFORE the licensing program install gets run, the junction point I created is removed, and then I get the error message about there being insufficient permissions to create the junction point. It seems odd that sufficient permissions exist to delete the junction point but not to create it.

Hope this helps

EdT

[licensingX4M2F]

where did you find this log, i think we may be having some of the same issue. however during OSD in sccm it just hands at that exe. However i cant find the log in windows temp, since its running in OSD.