The Start
The other day my boss came in with a colleagues laptop and told me that the VPN software failed to update, and by fail to update completely removed the old version and didn’t update to the latest version. Checking the laptops ‘Programs and Features’ sure enough showed no signs of the application.
I simply grabbed the latest version of the software installer and attempt to reinstall the application, yet to my dismay the latest installer complains with the following error ‘The feature you are trying to use is on a network resource that is unavailable.’ How insightful…
I figured it was a registry issue, as the registry is known to hold old settings from applications and do not get cleaned up properly. This place can be a cease pool on old machines that have been constantly upgraded.
The Dig
There are plenty of references online when it comes to this error. The main one people reference is the HKLM/Software/Classes/installer/products.
Even though I cleaned everything in this based on the application I was installing, it was still failing with with same error.
The Answer
Lucky for me it kept specifying what it was expecting for a network path, I decided to search the registry based on this, and found there was a key.
After removing the parent GUID based key, the installer ran successfully.
If my memory serves me correctly I believe the problematic key was under:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Installer\Products