Tag Archives: install

Install telnet from the command line

pkgmgr /iu:"TelnetClient"

Wait a bit for the install to finish.
I do wish that pkgmgr would actually wait until the install has finished before coming back to a dos prompt as it’s annoying that you have no idea when the install has actually completed. On my machine it takes about 30 seconds.
I’m finding it hard to believe that my laptop did not have telnet on it – as I use it all the time. However whenever I install telnet from the dos prompt I always have to look up the syntax (and it’s still quicker than going into add/remove programs.
Hopefully this blog post will hit the search engines and therefore the syntax will be displayed on the first page rather than having to open a Microsoft page, scroll down and then view the syntax.

Fixed: Office 2010 installation with MAK key gives Error: Can’t decode PIDKey – Invalid digits! ErrorCode: 0(0x0)

After doing an administrative installation of Office Professional Plus 2010 for a client, I was trying to test the installation of office on a desktop machine but kept getting “Error: Can’t decode PIDKey – Invalid digits! ErrorCode: 0(0x0).” as the error message. I confirmed that the key was correct by doing a manual installation of the software and using the same product key that was successful. I was unable to find any useful pages on the internet with this error message so ended up logging a call with Microsoft Product Support to troubleshoot the installation.

Our troubleshooting steps were to remove the updates folder completely and try an installation – this worked so we knew the problem was in the updates directory. Recopying back the files from the extracted service pack 1 dvd worked successfully so the problem was either service pack 2 or the setup.msp file. I copied back the sp2 files and again the software installed successfully (note that having a virtual test pc makes these tests very easy. No uninstalling of office required!)  Again the installation was successful. I then copied the setup.msp file back into the updates directory and the installation failed again. As the configurations that are made in the setup.msp can either be set in the config.xml or group policy it was ok to proceed without using the setup.msp.

Full details of the log files and more information can also be found at the Microsoft forums where I posted the initial request for help.

The installation failed with: This patch package could not be opened – Fixed.

I have been trying to install the KB958481 patch for Microsoft Dot Net Framework 2 for many hours. Each time the installation would fail with “The installation failed with: This patch package could not be opened. Verify that the patch package exists and that you can access it, or contact the application vendor to verify that this is a valid Windows Installer Patch Package.”

Of course the patch file exists (I am installing it after all) and the patch file came from Microsoft so I would hope it’s valid.  Most of the suggestions seemed to resolve around removing the dotnet framework and reinstalling. All of which I had done in a variety of ways. First by uninstalling the software through add/remove programs and then through Aaron Stebner’s dotnet cleanup tool – neither of which solved the problem.

Eventually I stumbled across a tech posting (made after my initial problem started) in the Microsoft forums (first and second posting that mentioned installing the Microsoft Installer 4.5 redistributable component. After an initial reboot before installing, a reboot after installing, installing the .net patch and another reboot afterwards I was up and running and able to install the other .net patches too.

Peachtree Quantum 2010 install crash and recovery

I had the misfortune today to have to go through the torturous process known as the Peachtree install. Having turned off my AV and turned on my firewall so the installation can poke holes through the firewall, the installation actually went fairly smoothly on the server. 2 hours later though I’m still struggling to install the first client.

The initial installation got all the way through to the end and then gave me an error 1327 which is something to do with installshield and redirected folders. (It’s actually because I launched the setup program using runas, but the program checks for the logged in users data location which the setup program does not have access to).

The next installation, logged on as an administrator almost finished with the status bar filled to the end but the “Peachtree Accounting is performing the requestion operations” had a blank section underneath. Checking the eventlog and temp file locations showed me nothing was actually happening.

After rebooting the machine, the installation would not run again as the product was already installed although no shortcuts had been added to the menu’s anywhere and the software wasn’t in add/remove programs like the install alert said it would be. I ran the Microsoft install cleanup program to remove the software and then started the install again.

This time the software said it was still installed, but going back to the setup splash screen the modify/remove option said the software was not installed.

I called Peachtree and thankfully they answered the phone pretty quickly – the solution is to exit the install program, delete c:\windows\peachinst directory and also the c:\windows\ptx*.ini files.

Note that this worked in my case, it may be specific to Peachtree Quantum and I would recommend you take a backup before deleting files.

I’m not a Peachtree expert by any means so I can’t guarantee this process is safe to do (but worked for me)