Installing messaging software displays error 1324 invalid character

Question

Trying to install Reuters Messaging software onto a windows 7 pc we receive the error message

Error 1324: The folder path 'My Documents' contains an invalid character

We've tried installing the application using the local admin account and the user account which is an AD account (roaming?). This user account has administrative rights (i.e. should be allowed to install applications).

The users 'My Documents' folder is located on a network drive, where only the user has access.

We've tried experimenting with the

HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer\ User Shell Folders

registry entries and setting them to a local position (i.e. C:\Users\Username\Documents) but this didn't resolve the error.

We've also tried the following which was taken from a website I can't remember the name of:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem

Select the NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation entry and change the value to 0

Select the Win31FileSystem entry and change the value to 0

which didn't resolve the issue.

Edit: This was also an issue when attempting to install the citrix native client necessary to run citrix application (*.ica extension). This made the same error box appear.

Answer 1

Apparently the answer was a simple solution that I'd overlooked (because it was so obvious..)

If I instead of attempting to run the program as administrator under a normal account, login as the local administrator account from the login screen, I was able to install the program without any issues.

The normal user was then able to subsequently launch the program via the launch/start menu.

So the solution was to use the local administrator account to install the software. Who would have known?

Sorry for having wasted peoples time with such an obvious thing....

Answer 2

Instead of editing the registry can't we use more graceful method like this.