I’ve been conducting an experiment running Windows 7 as my main operating system for a couple of weeks, and so far the experience has largely been positive. There’s been only one problem: OpenOffice failed to install.
When installing, the installer would get to the very end and fail with this error: “ Error 1303. The installer has insufficient privileges to access this directory: C:\Windows\winsxs\Policies. The installation cannot continue. Log on as an administrator or contact your system administrator.” I’m not the only person with this problem – but it seems to be pretty rare as mentions of it on the web are few and far between.
The first thing I tried was running the installer with Admin privs, and under Windows XP emulation mode (all done via the Properties of the file). No difference. Changing the owner of the winsxs folder didn’t change anything. In fact, nothing did.
However, following a suggestion by @manxstef on Twitter, I tried installing go-oo.org instead – and lo and behold it worked first time. So if you’re having the same problem, try go-oo – it might just fix the trick for you too.
Incidentally, if you want to find out more about OpenOffice and what it can do for you, I recommend the following books:
Beginning OpenOffice 3 – Buy from Amazon.com – Buy from Amazon.co.uk.
OpenOffice.org for Dummies – Buy from Amazon.com – Buy from Amazon.co.uk
