Windows 7 won't let me install anything...

[Reeves]

...from my external hard drive. I've just done a clean install of Windows 7 and installed my firewall etc. from my memory stick. However, I have alot more applications saved on my hard drive, which I plugged in and seems to recognise without any issues. However, whilst it'll open music without bother, it doesn't let me run any EXE files.

It claims to be a 'network error' and that the file cannot be accessed, giving me the error code 0x800704b3. I've tried Googling this code and little help is available other than mentions of the Homegroup feature, something which I haven't set up, or even touched. The details say "The network path was either typed incorrectly, does not exist, or the network provider is not currently available." I've tried the Diagnose option and it comes back inconclusive. I've tried running as Administrator and the same message appears.

As I say, this is only occuring on my external hard drive, and had no bother at all with my USB flash drive. I also have no settings set up, altered or even touched related to any sort of network other than my wireless internet connection.

Could somebody offer me any help, please? Many thanks.

[Andrew Wood]

I'm sure I've had something similar happen in the past - and to clear the issue, you have to check an option in the right-click context menu - something to do with trusting an application from an external source. However, I can't reproduce it.

[nidave]

its probably going to be an ownership issue. this can case problems as the files are marked as an owner of the old PC.

This is from our KB at work:
How to Grant Permissions

Locate the file or folder on which you want to take ownership in windows explorer
Right click on file or folder and select “Properties” from Context Menu
Click on Edit button in Properties windows Click ok to confirm UAC elevation request.
Select user/group from permission windows or click add to add other user or group.
Now under Permission section check the rights which you want to grant i.e check “Full Control” under the “Allow” column to assign full access rights control permissions to Administrators group.


Click Ok for changes to take effect and click ok final ok to exit from Properties window.


Taking Ownership of a file

1. Locate the file or folder on which you want to take ownership in windows explorer

2. Right click on file or folder and select “Properties” from Context Menu

3. Click on Security tab

4. Click on “Advanced”

5. Now click on Owner tab in Advance Security Settings for User windows

6. Click on Edit Button and select user from given Change Owner to list if user or group is not in given list then click on other users or groups. Enter name of user/group and click ok.

8. Now select User/group and click apply and ok. (Check “Replace owner on subcontainers and objects” if you have files and folder within selected folder)

9. Click ok when Windows Security Prompt is displayed

10. Now Owner name must have changed.

11. Now click Ok to exist from Properties windows

Once you have taken the ownership of file or folder check the general permissions

[Reeves]

Thanks for those steps. However, I don't appear to have a Security tab in Properties, nor an Edit button. Apparently, the tab won't appear on certain versions of Windows 7 and if it's a FAT32 drive - I've got Ultimate and the drive is HFSJ, albeit running on Macdrive.

EDIT: Just found something on a forum that Google found. Apparently, somebody else had the same issue with a Mac formatted drive. They contacted Mediafour and was told, "Unfortunately, this is a limitation of using Windows Vista or Windows 7. Any executables that require elevated permissions cannot be run from a Mac disk." Looks like a dead end for me. Thanks anyway.

[dosxuk]

Why not copy the files to your desktop, run them from there and then delete them after you've installed them?