Error 1606. Could not access network location %SystemDrive%\inetpub\wwwroot\ while installing on IIS7

Question

I'm trying to port our software installer which currently supports Windows 2000 and Windows 2003 to a Windows 2008 environment. Currently, the installer gets an error which reads "Error 1606. Could not access network location %SystemDrive%\inetpub\wwwroot."

%SystemDrive% is without a doubt C:\, and C:\inetpub\wwwroot\ has the correct accessibility.

It is interesting that if I hardcode the path in the following keys in the registry to C:\inetpub\wwwroot\, without using the environment variable, the installer works correctly. • HKLM/Software/Wow6432Node/Microsoft/InetStp/PathWWWRoot • KHLM/Software/Microsoft/InetStp/PathWWWRoot.

This seems like a very poor hack. I do not want to tell our clients that they need to hack their registry before they will be able to install our product. Another option is to change the registry behind the scenes, do our install, and revert the registry keys to their original values at the end of the install, but obviously I don't like this solution either.

I find it hard to believe that Microsoft would have done this without reason, so there must be an alternate approach to get these installers to work without modifying the registry.

Any tips appreciated.

Answer 1

I too have recently come across this issue.

Permissions on wwwroot were fine

systemdrive was set correctly in the environment

but still no joy. carry out this registry change and the installer worked as it should.

I only got this behaviour running the installer as an administrator - which was required to register libraries as part of the install.

Answer 2

Try installing before you add any IIS-related features / roles. I was able to install on 2k8R2 the first time I put it on my PC and failed on my rebuild. The only difference between the initial build and rebuild was that I installed the IIS management components before trying to install the package that was barking the error 1606 about not being able to find %systemdrive%\inetpub\wwwroot. I know it's not going to be acceptable for addressing the systems already built, but should help future builds.

At any rate, if your installer works prior to laying down IIS-related roles/features, just make sure you document that in your read me first documentation.