Cannot install calibre in windows 7

[chirotor]

Solved. I had to go to user accounts in the control panel. Click on change user account control settings and move the bar to never notify and then reboot. I plan to reset the account control settings back to default later.

[Manichean]

Originally Posted by chirotor

The message has not changed with or without unblocking the program, "The System Administrator has set policies to prevent this installation." The only option is OK.

That sounds kind of like software installations are prohibited as per policies. Do other installs work? If not, try finding the computer policy pages (I don't know where they are on Win7) and verify that installations are allowed.

Edit: I really should read all the posts before making one myself. Never mind what I said.

[toddos]

Originally Posted by chirotor

Solved. I had to go to user accounts in the control panel. Click on change user account control settings and move the bar to never notify and then reboot. I plan to reset the account control settings back to default later.

Strange, so UAC was getting in the way. From what you described of the installation process, you were failing where you should've gotten a UAC prompt. How were you opening the MSI? Double-clicking it from Explorer? Somehow, you got into a state where UAC didn't elevate and thus it attempted to do the install using your non-admin credentials, which shouldn't have happened.

Was this a direct download from Kovad's site (or the sourceforge links from the calibre site)? Was it a .msi file or some .exe that you were running? Something else? The only times I've seen MSIs not elevate properly is when run from a non-admin command line window using msiexec. For example if you were trying to install using a batch file of some sort that called msiexec from within, that would fail to elevate. Simply double-clicking the MSI should not fail to elevate.

Cybmole, I disagree with your assessment. If you have applications that need to elevate and you need to run them at startup, either you or the application developers are doing something wrong. For one, very few apps should need to elevate at all. For another, if you need to run an app elevated at startup, it probably ought to be written as an NT Service (you can do this yourself using srvany.exe from the Windows Resource Kit, to make up for lazy developers). If an app that needs to elevate shows up as "unknown", the developer sucks and failed to build his manifest properly (or at all). If an app that shouldn't need to elevate won't run if it's not admin, the app was written incorrectly.

Turning off UAC in order to use broken apps only encourages bad developers to continue writing broken apps.

[cybmole]

Originally Posted by toddos

Cybmole, I disagree with your assessment. If you have applications that need to elevate and you need to run them at startup, either you or the application developers are doing something wrong. For one, very few apps should need to elevate at all. For another, if you need to run an app elevated at startup, it probably ought to be written as an NT Service (you can do this yourself using srvany.exe from the Windows Resource Kit, to make up for lazy developers). If an app that needs to elevate shows up as "unknown", the developer sucks and failed to build his manifest properly (or at all). If an app that shouldn't need to elevate won't run if it's not admin, the app was written incorrectly.

Turning off UAC in order to use broken apps only encourages bad developers to continue writing broken apps.

well 2 points -

1. toggling UAC off, then ON as per the OPs solution IS a bad idea. UAC creates a virtual registry, which is lost when toggled off. This causes some programs e.g. DVDFAB to lose their registration keys, and causes IE to lose all cookies & saved passwords.

2.
apps: i had a long discussion with the writers of pinnacle game profiler. they tell me it is difficult, slow and expensive to get your app signed my microsoft so that UAC will recognise it. It not a case of app being "broken", its a case of having to pay microsoft to sign it. If you are really curious - the thread will still be on their forum.

For calibre, where there is a new install version weekly - that would be unmanageable.

For ERNDT, it was possible to write an auto-schedule script to run at start up, but I was unable to make that work for peer block.
it became a repetitive annoyance to have to keep OKaying veriosu other handy utilities, & boycotting those because they are not UAC friendly makes no sense.

I thought long & hard before permanently disabling UAC. The main benefit , as I saw it, was protecting me from drive-by malware, which had twice infected my old XP PC. Once I realised that , even with UAC off, I was still protected from rogue .exe and .msi downloads, then I happily disabled it.
NB I also have Microsoft security essentials, which checks every download for me - I consider that enough protection, for a PC which only I use.

back on topic, it could be that now calibre has been installed once, then updates will install OK even with UAC on - I guess some volunteer testers are needed to work through all of the win 7 32 bit / 64 bit + UAC + run as admin options for clean installs / updates & see whether this was a one-off fluke, or a bug that needs addressing.

[toddos]

Originally Posted by cybmole

back on topic, it could be that now calibre has been installed once, then updates will install OK even with UAC on - I guess some volunteer testers are needed to work through all of the win 7 32 bit / 64 bit + UAC + run as admin options for clean installs / updates & see whether this was a one-off fluke, or a bug that needs addressing.

I've already said my bit about bad developers writing broken software, so I'll keep this to the topic of Calibre (and installers in general, really). Every MSI that deploys system-wide (that is, does not restrict itself to only your %userprofile%, which is pretty much every MSI) will elevate UAC. The difference between signed and unsigned is that UAC will say the MSI is from an unknown source and you shouldn't trust it but the UI otherwise remains the same. I think what you're really referring to is when an application tries to elevate and is unsigned, in that it gives a different dialog than what you'd see from a signed application (or what you'd see if you manually ran it as administrator).

I upgrade calibre every time there's a new release, which at times has been multiple updates in a single week, and I've never had an issue with UAC not elevating nor causing other problems. What the OP saw is not normal, in that for him UAC failed to elevate when it should have. More information is needed to determine if something is broken on his system, if it's just calibre-related (other MSIs elevate as expected), or if it's user error (the batch script/manual msiexec run scenario I laid out previously). I'm leaning towards the latter scenario since he was unable to run the MSI manually from msiexec, and I'm guessing he downloaded something that's not the calibre MSI.

[cybmole]

[QUOTE=toddos;1279530 The difference between signed and unsigned is that UAC will say the MSI is from an unknown source and you shouldn't trust it but the UI otherwise remains the same. .[/QUOTE]

yes, the issue, for auto-run at windows startup, then becomes that the system cannot have that UAC dialog with you, so it decides not to start the app.
the work-around is to create a scheduled task which will run it at start up with highest privileges, but that does not always work - e.g. for peer block