During installation via SIM, getting "Error 1325 - File name is not a valid short file name"
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During installation via SIM, getting "Error 1325 - File name is not a valid short file name"

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Article ID: 163448

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Updated On:

Products

Symantec Products

Issue/Introduction

Installation/upgrade using Symantec Installation Manager (aka SIM) is failing.
According to the NS logs, SIM was having a hard time getting one of the MSIs installed (in this case altiris_credentialmanager_8_0_x64.msi). 

We tried to install this MSI directly without SIM by using the following from the command prompt:
msiexec.exe /i "<path>\altiris_credentialmanager_8_0_x64.msi" skipaim=1 \l*vx c:\msilog.txt



 

Error 1325 - File name is not a valid short file name

Cause

The MSI log showed that msiexec was failing with "Error 1325 - File name is not a valid short file name" when trying to access what looks like a share directory under the H drive for MyDocuments. According to the Microsoft documentation this error message usually is related to lack of permissions for the account in use to access this mapped folder.

Resolution

The customer made some changes on permissions and how this shared drive was loaded. After that we were able to install the MSI without complain.

We used the following information as reference to solved the issue with permissions:

https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/26611101/Error-1325-username-is-not-a-valid-short-file-name.html

- The permissions on "Username" is full acces for the user but the permission on "Share$" has no read access. Even if the user can successuflly access the full UNC, MSI install files need "read" access on "Share$".
- It also appears that if the username is no longer than 8 characters, it is working fine even if user has no "read" access on "Share$"

So the fix would be to:
- Give READ access on "Share$" to the users or everyone


Note:
Now, in some instances after removing the share reference (redirecting a folder like My Documents or My Pictures to a network share), there are situations that the reference is not completaly cleared out from the registry, causing that msiexec fails to properly access the location.
The following article suggests few areas where the reference needs to be cleared out: http://superuser.com/questions/258239/error-1325-username-is-not-a-valid-short-file-name