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Okay, at first glance, it may seem that this How To posting isn’t related to Palm or Windows Mobile but wait, it is, sort of. You see, this problem came up as a result of a Windows Mobile program installation accidentally triggered but in a Limited Profile. This could very well happen with a Palm program installation as well, or Windows program installation. So, you see, it’s all related. Read on for more details of what I’m talking about.

I recently experienced a problem that did not go away but thankfully I found a solution. Hopefully this solution will work for you if you happen to encounter a similar problem. If this worked for you, or if you have a similar situation, please leave a comment and share with the rest of us. Thanks!

ActiveSync attempts and re-attempts and fails to install in Limited Profile

What happened was that I was logged on as a Limited Profile user and for whatever reason (I can’t remember what I did. It was likely an accidental click on a setup file that triggered an installation on Activesync), a Windows Mobile program was installing itself on Activesync. Since I don’t have ActiveSync installed in my Limited Profile, Activesync started to install. As most of you may know, Limited Profile does not normally allow installations to occur or run for security reasons (thus why it’s “Limited profile”). Most times, if a program starts to install itself, it should come up with an error that you do not have the sufficient priviledges or rights to perform the task or whatever. So, okay, the setup doesn’t continue and eventually quits, but not until it takes up a nice chunk of time trying to load the installation. Worse yet, it re-attempts to run the installation if I click on the “Cancel” while it’s starting up the installation. But, that’s not all. It will do this every time I start up my Windows and loads the Limited Profile. So you can imagine my frustration every day dealing with this mess.

To backtrack on the subject, Most times, you CAN install programs (ie .exe files) as well as run programs in a Limited Profile as an Administrator (or with Administrator privileges). You can bypass the restriction by right clicking on the setup.exe or whatever .exe (or a shortcut link to an .exe) file and select “Run as…” and then select to run the installation under an Administrator or similar elevated profile user. That’s fine. I am able to run and install some programs this way. But, on the newer setup files with the .msi (Windows Installer, ex-Microsoft Installer) extension, there is no “Run as…” option. So what do you do?

Since the program has not been successfully installed in this Limited Profile, you can’t uninstall it and also for the same reason, the setup will stay in the “to be installed” queue since it was never completed. Unfortunately, I was unable to determine where the instructions to install the Activesync was located, (otherwise, I would have removed and deleted it) so I was stuck. If anyone knows where most installation setup instructions are saved on the computer, please leave a comment to share it with the rest of the Palm Discovery readers. Thanks!

I guess the easiest and most obvious solution was to simply log out of the Limited Profile, log in as Administrator and change the Limited Profile user into an Administrator and then log back in as that user, which has temporarily been elevated into Admin status. Then, make the necessary installation, fixes, etc, log out and back as Administator and change it back. But then, of course, that would be too easy. I wanted to find a different solution from within the Limited Profile since it seems ridiculous that I can “Run as…” for .exe files but can’t do it for .msi files.

After a few weeks of dealing with this, I found the answer through a search. Here’s a link to the page that solved it! Thanks, Google! Download the MsiRunAsAdmin.zip file. Unzip it and double click on the MsiRunAsAdmin.reg file to have it registered in the registry. You should now have the “Run as…” option in the right click menu on .msi files just like for .exe files. Yay!

After trying different registry files via the searches, this is the one that not only added the “Run as…” right click option but also provided me with the ability to run the installation as an Admin. So, with that capability now available for me under Limited Profile, the problem is solved. I ran the ActiveSync setup.msi file under Administrator, repaired the installation, uninstalled it and everything is now okay again. Now more annoying Activesync installation process running every time I start up Windows in my Limited Profile. And if it happens again, I can easily fix it.

Like I said, this could have easily been solved by temporarily changing the Limited Profile user as an Admin and doing the fixes, but then, I wouldn’t have the excuse of writing this “solution” up, now would I?

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: archives categories palm windows-mobile howto quicktips run-as admin run-as-admin run-as-admin-in-limited-profile install-msi-in-limited-profile run-msi-in-limited-profile repair-activesync-in-limited-profile activesync activesync-in-limited-profile