WezM.netThe weblog of Wesley Moore

I encoun­tered a (Microsoft) site the other day that required Sil­verlight to be installed. Given I was using my work laptop (run­ning Win­dows XP) I thought I’d give it a try. The first attempt at run­ning the setup file I down­loaded resulted in the fol­low­ing error mes­sage (which was opened in a browser window, not dis­played by the installer):

The Microsoft Sil­verlight down­load was auto­mat­i­cally extracted to a vir­tual drive. You should man­u­ally extract the down­load to a phys­i­cal drive, and then run it from there. Please follow these steps to com­plete your installation:

1. Create a new folder on drive C called Sil­verlight­Temp.
2. Save the Sil­verlight down­load to this folder.
3. Click Start, click Run, type cmd.exe, and then click OK.
4. In the cmd.exe window, type cd C:\SilverlightTemp\, and then press Enter.
5. This step depends on which ver­sion of Sil­verlight you are installing.
* For Sil­verlight 1.0 Beta:
In the cmd.exe window, type Silverlight.1.0beta.exe /X, and then press Enter.
* For Sil­verlight 1.1 Alpha:
6. In the cmd.exe window, type Silverlight.1.1alpha.exe /X, and then press Enter.
7. If you receive a User Account Con­trol (UAC) prompt, click Con­tinue.
8. In the Choose Direc­tory For Extracted Files box, type C:\SilverlightTemp, and then click OK.
9. In the Extrac­tion Com­plete box, click OK.
10. In the cmd.exe window, type install.exe, and then press Enter.
11. If you receive a UAC prompt, click Con­tinue.
12. In the cmd.exe window, type cd.. and then press Enter.
13. In the cmd.exe window, type rmdir Sil­verlight­Temp /S /Q, and then press Enter.
14. In the cmd.exe window, type exit, and then press Enter.

After recov­er­ing from the ini­tial shock of the instal­la­tion instruc­tions for a very con­sumer ori­ented tech­nol­ogy requir­ing use of the com­mand line, I fol­lowed the instruc­tions only to be shown another web based error message:

This instal­la­tion is for­bid­den by system policy. Con­tact your system admin­is­tra­tor for assistance.

Yes, that’s right I don’t have admin­is­tra­tor priv­i­leges on my work laptop. Surely the installer could have worked this out at the start of the process.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 5th, 2008 at 11:56 am and is filed under Windows. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.