My friend is having trouble installing Company of Heroes and CoH: Opposing Fronts under Windows 7. A few percentages into the installation, when the C/C++ runtime is being installed, the install fails with the following message:
An error occurred while installing the Windows Installer package "C:\Users\…\AppData\Local\Temp\…\…\vcredist.msi". Error code 10212:00000659: MsiInstallProductW returned 00000659: This installation is forbidden by system policy. Contact your system administrator.
We have tried:
- Making sure that any previous installations have been completely removed, including searching and deleting any files/folders/registry entries matching "THQ" (the publisher) and "Relic" (the developer).
- Installing into a brand new user account
- Running Setup.exe as administrator
- Running Compatibility check for Setup.exe, which suggested Windows XP but failed when trying those settings out
Things to note:
- Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 is already installed – My theory is that the installer is trying to install an older version of the runtime, and that Windows 7 says "No you don't!". Also, the download pages for those files says they are for Windows XP, etc, but not for Windows 7.
- Downloaded the C++ 2005 SP1 redist, but that install fails just the same
- The logged in account is an administrator account, but I still tried the "Run as admin" option. Also, the newly created account mentioned was an admin account.
I think the issue is more related to the Windows Installer than the game itself.
Does anyone know what might be the cause of the system policy error?
Best Answer
I found this answer on the Relic News forums which basically suggests installing the vcredist file manually: