Installing an MSI on Server 2012 : The System Administrator has set policies to prevent this installation

Installing an MSI on Server 2012 : The System Administrator has set policies to prevent this installation

I am trying to install an MSI on a Windows Server 2012 machine which is part of my lab domain. I am local and domain admin, but I seem to be prevented from installing this MSI.

For clarification, when attempting to install the git extension for visual studio (located here) logged in as a domain user that is part of the administrator group, I get the following error

The machine reporting the error is a Windows Server 2012.

Solution :

I’ve run into this behavior, where MSI installation is prevented with “The system administrator has set policies to prevent this installation” before. I believe it is due to default Windows Software Restriction policy and I’ve seen it on both Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2012.

There is probably a better GUI based way to alter the policy, but setting the following reg key as an admin on the machine does the trick: I had to add the “Installer” part of the path as a key, then add the DWORD “DisableMSI” (without the quotes).

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Installer]
"DisableMSI"=dword:00000000