Lightroom CC Fails To Install

[harril64899232]

• Windows 7 Enterprise x64 on a domain
• Installing CC products for a regular user
• Only Lightroom fails to install due to a weird permission problem

I'm a system administrator trying to install Lightroom CC (2015) for a client on our computer on our domain. I installed the CC Desktop with the client logged onto their domain account and then entered the domain administrator credentials when prompted. I then ran the CC Desktop still on the client's account, started the installation of Lightroom, and again entered admin credentials when prompted. This has been the standard procedure in the past with Adobe CC installations.

This time the installation of Lightroom fails with exit code 7, "ERROR: DF016: Unable to create directory "<path to Documents on admin's network share>\..\Desktop". Error 5 Access denied...".  Analyzing the log files revealed that the installer is correctly using the correct client's local user profile folder for various purposes untill it's supposed to create this folder. At that time the installer chooses to use the admin account's network share that naturally isn't accessible to the regular user account.

Then I decided to start over uninstalling everything Adobe, rebooting, using the Creative Cloud Cleanup Utility, rebooting, and removing any remaining folders on C:\Program Files[ (x86)]\Adobe. This time I gave client's account local admin priviliges, logged on it, installed CC Desktop, and started the installation of Lightroom. Again, at 24%, Lightroom installation failed with exit code 7, ERROR: DF016: Unable to create directory "<path to Documents on the correct network share>\..\Desktop". Error 5 Access denied... So this time the user doesn't appear to have access to their own network share. How can this be? I checked the permissions and tested it in practise. The user has full access to it, it has almost 10 GB of free space, and we successfully created and deleted files and folders there. Still, somehow CC installer fails at it.

I tried troubleshooting with the usual exit code 6 / exit code 7 troubleshooter and Googling for hours but nothing helps. The strangest thing is, only Lightroom fails. All other products in CC (Photoshop, Premiere, InDesign, Acrobat etc.) install correctly.

[Bani Verma]

Hi harril64899232,

Please refer to the following links:

Errors "Exit Code 6" and "Exit Code 7" installing Adobe Creative Cloud, CS6, CS5.5, Premiere Element...

Error "Exit 6" or "Exit 7" | Install log | Read, write, system file errors | Adobe Creative Suite 5....

Let us know if this helps.

[harril64899232]

Thank you for your reply Bani. Unfortunately none of the applicable solutions from those links works. Your answer could be the right or the only one but at this time I have to unmark it as correct.

I'm stumped. The best idea I have at the moment is that Lightroom installer is actually trying to create a folder outside the user's network share. The ".." in the path could be interpreted as "parent folder". I'm pretty sure the ".." is there just to shorten the path for the error message. Still, the problem is the same with both admin and regular user accounts: Lightroom CC installer doesn't seem to be able to create a folder in a location where the user who ran the installer absolutely has write permissions.

[Bani Verma]

It seems you have a Volume/Teams license, to get better help i am moving this thread to Deployment for Creative Cloud Team, Enterprise, & CS‌

[harril64899232]

I guess this is one of those problems that only format C: solves. And that's not an option at this time.

[harril64899232 · Accepted solution]

UPDATE:

I temporarily changed user's home directory to a local path for another try at installing Lightroom. I cleaned CC with the cleaner tool first. Now the installer just wants to create the directory (mentioned in the error message) to admin account's home directory. In CC desktop's settings there's a correct path for files (C:\Users\<username>) and installation location is set to C:\Program Files\Adobe. These probably don't matter but I thought I'd mention them anyway.

We give up. This is taking too much time. The installer is simply trying to do something unnecessary and fails and we don't have the tools nor desire to debug it further. We'll use Photoshop instead.

[johnt69]

It needs to be installed as a local admin. Then you can open it up as a domain user with admin rights and point the catalog to a local drive.

[benatjawbone]

Many of us don't have local admin rights on a work machine.