Saturday, December 27, 2014

Could not access network location %APPDATA%

Installing the SCCM 2012 client can be a daunting task when errors occur.  Here one such error can be seen:

MSI: Action 12:51:08: CostFinalize. Computing space requirements
MSI: Could not access network location %APPDATA%\.
MSI: Could not access network location %APPDATA%\.
File C:\WINDOWS\ccmsetup\{181D79D7-1115-4D96-8E9B-5833DF92FBB4}\client.msi installation failed. Error text: ExitCode: 1603
Action: CostFinalize.
I have seen this error only once on a new machine.  I have seen it several times on a machine that was upgraded from SCCM 2007 to SCCM 2012 and then reveted back to SCCM 2007.  This error occurs shortly after the install process to once again move it to SCCM 2012.

I don't know if the state of the machine was already damaged but you will see the Security regisitry look something like this:



In order to fix this problem you need to fix the AppData folder setting seen here in a working machine:





In some cases the damaged registry is missing many of the enviromental variables and it is necessary to recreate or fix all of them.  The registry in question is the s-1-5-18 account SID:
SECURITY_LOCAL_SYSTEM_RID

A special account used by the operating system.