Microsoft Office 2003 chained installation is not successful with Prefix form of secure transform (818241)

CAUSE

This problem occurs if you use the Prefix form of a secure transform by including an at sign (@) or a pipe symbol (|) as the first character in the path of the .mst file.

If you append an at sign to the name of the .mst file to indicate a relative path secure transform, the at sign is treated as part of the .mst file name. Therefore, the transform is not found.

If you append a pipe symbol to the path of the .mst file to indicate a secure transform, Setup.exe does not recognize it as a full path transform. The transform is treated as a relative path transform with the pipe symbol as the first character. Setup.exe appends the current path of the source location of the primary install to a relative path transform. The result is a path that is not valid. The transform is not found.

WORKAROUND

To work around this problem, use the Property form of Secure Transforms. To do this, add the TRANSFORMSSECURE property; do not reference the .mst file with an at sign or a pipe symbol. In the Chained install section of the Setup.ini file, add TRANSFORMSSECURE=1 to the current CmdLine= line. To do, use the following examples.

Example 1

Instead of the following

[ChainedInstall_1]
path=\\AppServer\Office11\Pro11.MSI
mst=@accounting.mst
tasktype=msi
cmdline=REBOOT=Suppress

use the following:

[ChainedInstall_1]
path=\\AppServer\Office11\Pro11.MSI
mst=accounting.mst tasktype=msi
cmdline=REBOOT=Suppress TRANSFORMSSECURE=1

Example 2

Instead of the following

[ChainedInstall_1]
path=\\AppServer\Office11\Pro11.MSI
mst=|\\AppServer\Office11\Custom\accounting.mst tasktype=msi
cmdline=REBOOT=Suppress

use the following:

[ChainedInstall_1]
path=\\AppServer\Office11\Pro11.MSI
mst=\\AppServer\Office11\Custom\accounting.mst tasktype=msi
cmdline=REBOOT=Suppress TRANSFORMSSECURE=1

MORE INFORMATION

A chained installation is typically run in quiet mode with the /q switch. In quiet mode, you do not receive an error message, but you can check the log files to see where the error occurred. For example, the following is an extract from the log file when the full path of the .mst file was specified as mst=@test.mst:

MSI (c) (D0:80): Machine policy value 'TransformsSecure' is 1
MSI (c) (D0:80): Looking for secure file transform: 
MSI (c) (D0:80): Note: 1: 2343 
MSI (c) (D0:80): Unable to create a temp copy of transform ''.
MSI (c) (D0:80): Note: 1: 2203 2:  3: -2147287037 
MSI (c) (D0:80): Couldn't find cached transform . Looking for it at the original location.
MSI (c) (D0:80): Looking for secure file transform: \\appserver\office11\@test.mst
MSI (c) (D0:80): Note: 1: 2318 2: appserver\office11\@test.mst 
MSI (c) (D0:80): Unable to create a temp copy of transform '\\appserver\office11\@test.mst'.
MSI (c) (D0:80): Note: 1: 2203 2: \\appserver\office11\@test.mst 3: -2147287038 
MSI (c) (D0:80): Note: 1: 2729 
DEBUG: Error 2203:  Database: appserver\office11\@test.mst. Cannot open database file. System error -2147287038
1: 2203 2: \\appserver\office11\@test.mst 3: -2147287038 
Error applying transforms.  Verify that the specified transform paths are valid.
\\appserver\office11\@test.mst
MSI (c) (D0:80): MainEngineThread is returning 1624

For another example, the following is an extract from the log file when the full path of the .mst file was specified as mst=|\\appserver\office11\custom\test.mst:

MSI (c) (24:E4): Machine policy value 'TransformsSecure' is 0
MSI (c) (24:E4): User policy value 'TransformsAtSource' is 0
MSI (c) (24:E4): Looking for file transform: \\appserver\office11\|\appserver\office11\custom\test.mst
MSI (c) (24:E4): Note: 1: 1314 2: \\appserver\office11\|\appserver\office11\custom 
MSI (c) (24:E4): Unable to create a temp copy of transform '\\appserver\office11\|\appserver\office11\custom\test.mst'.
MSI (c) (24:E4): Note: 1: 2203 2: \\appserver\office11\|\appserver\office11\custom\test.mst 3: -2147286788 
MSI (c) (24:E4): Note: 1: 2729 
DEBUG: Error 2203:  Database: \\appserver\office11\|\appserver\office11\custom\test.mst. Cannot open database file. System error -2147286788
1: 2203 2: \\appserver\office11\|\appserver\office11\custom\test.mst 3: -2147286788 
Error applying transforms.  Verify that the specified transform paths are valid.
\\appserver\office11\|\appserver\office11\custom\test.mst
MSI (c) (24:E4): MainEngineThread is returning 1624

For more information about secure transforms, visit the following Microsoft Web site: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/msi/setup/secured_transforms.asp
For more information about the TRANSFORMSSECURE property, visit the following Microsoft Web site: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/msi/setup/transformssecure_property.asp
For more information about Windows Installer technologies, visit the following Microsoft Web site: http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/en/advanced/help/default.asp?url=/windows2000/en/advanced/help/sag_WinInstall_Technology.htm?id=3991