Microsoft’s security focus over the last few years has brought many improvements in the overall level of security. Along with this level of security also comes an increasing number of hoops to jump through to accomplish simple tasks.
Recently I found that it became impossible to install software from network shares onto Windows 64-bit servers. Trying to do so resulted in the error message:
“Windows cannot access the specified device, path, or file. You may not have the appropriate permissions to access the item.”
Searching on the Internet, the most commonly suggested workaround I found was to uninstall the Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration from the computer. This actually does work, but really doesn't sound like a great solution to me.
As it turns out, the solution is quite simple...but also a bit of a head scratcher. You wouldn’t think accessing files on your LAN would be controlled by an Internet Explorer setting (well maybe you would, but I wouldn’t!). Yet, changing IE settings is the easy way to solve this problem.
The solution is to add the LAN server where your install source share is to the Local Intranet zone in Internet Explorer. I suppose adding to the Trusted Sites would probably work, but since a share location is in the intranet for most of us, I think that’s the more logical place to make this change.
Here’s how I solved it on a 64-bit Windows 2003 R2 server with SP2 and IE7:
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In Internet explorer, select Tools/Options, then click on the Security tab
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Select the Local Intranet icon, then press the Sites button
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In the Add this website to the zone textbox, enter the name of the server in the form file://servername, then click the Add button
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Click the Close button on the bottom of the dialog, then OK on the Internet Options dialog
With that change made, your server should now be able to run software from network locations. No more need to copy them to a local file location first!