Permissions Issue Maybe? (MAPI32)

[Jamié]

Hi,

We have an administrative install set up under Group Policy to install
Office 2003 SP2 (including Outlook) on our Windows XP SP2 workstations
that are connected to Exchange/Windows Server 2003.

The HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\Setup registry entries
are modified at install to remove 'FirstRun'/'First-Run' and
'ImportPRF' points to the desired .PRF file. The install appears to
complete successfully.

When users click the Start | E-mail button for the first time after
install the 'gathering information' dialog arrives.

If an Administrator is logged in at the time, all is well. The
gathering information process completes and they can access email.

Our standard users are using Roaming Profiles on XP machines locked
down using Group Policy. When such a user runs
Outlook, *some* users on *some* machines get the following dialog
message immediately after the 'gathering information' dialog:

Microsoft Outlook 2003
In order to install Outlook, you must either be an administrator or
have Outlook approved by an administrator. Contact your administrator
for more information.

After the click on OK a second dialog says:

Microsoft Office Outlook
Cannot start Microsoft Office Outlook. MAPI32.DLL is corrupt or the
wrong version. This could have been caused by installing other
messaging software. Please reinstall Outlook.

Reinstalling Outlook manually doesn't seem to improve the situation. We
haven't been able to notice a pattern in which users/machine
combinations are causing the problem.

On checking many machines' system folder, all machines appear have the
same version of MAPI (Mapi.dll = 4.0.835.993; mapi32.dll = 1.0.2536.0).
fixmapi has been run but that makes no difference.

All machines on our site used to run Novell GroupWise but that was
removed using Add/Remove Programs.

I'm assuming this is a permissions issue ... but I could be wrong
None of my reference books mention this issue and I can't find any
information about it by Googling or in the Microsoft Knowledge Base. I
don't know how to 'approve' Outlook as indicated by the dialog message.


Any help would be grately appreciated - it's driving us mad!

Jaimé

 

[Jamié]

Okay - with 100% success so far (40-ish users out of 75-ish) we have
solved this problem by...

1. Creating a cusomised Default Profile from a virgin machine (which
never had Novell GroupWise installed) and copying this profile in to
..../NETLOGON/Deafult User

2. Moving their old profile elsewhere (for safety's sake) and making
them log-on to create a new profile based on the default one.

3. Running the previously installed Outlook (which ran without a
problem and got past 'gathering required information etc).

4. After they log off - copy back any Desktop shortcuts, cookies,
favourites they had - allowing them to rebuild their registry
preferences over time.

This works. They can roam. No problems. So evidently there was
something in their old profile that caused the problem. I'm not sure
whether it was in the registry or in the Application Data folders or
somewhere else - but something was wrong.

Any insights you might have would be welcomed!

I may try just overwriting ntuser.dat to see if it's the registry or
something else - just for interest.

If you have an insight please record it here to help anyone who may
suffer this problem in the future.