[tex-live] big troubles installing TL '09 on Windows 7 with 2 admins

[Benjamin Renaud]

Dear all,

I've had persistent problems trying to install TL 2009 on a Windows 7 machine. Here is the story : there are two user accounts on the machine, both have admin privileges, so let's call them "admin1" and "admin2". The Win OS (& other stuffs) were first installed by "admin1", hence the name — as it will appear, this detail matters. I've tried quite numerous (& unsuccessful) installations, notably :

1. logged as "admin1", I first did what looked the most normal & simple : running install-tl with admin rights, setting "install to all users".
2. after complete uninstalling, logged as "admin2", same procedure.
3. after complete uninstalling, logged as "admin1", a "standard user" install (= -non-admin), and then another "standard user" install being logged as "admin2".
4. various other attempts, doing the same thing, doing various other things, then trying to install from the .iso image instead of CTAN, etc.

Every time, the situation ended up the same : the PATH was set ok, but I couldn't launch any of the binaries. At least for "admin2" (which is my "normal" account) — I didn't try very extensively for "admin1", sometimes it seemed to be ok, sometimes not, but I'm not really sure anymore. Below is what I had (being "admin2") with my very minimal tests :


C:\Users\benjamin>tex --version
Tex 3.1415926 (Web2C 2009)
*BLA BLA BLA… [the usual normal stuff]*

C:\Users\benjamin>pdftex
(null): fatal: Can't get long name for C:\texlive.
.

C:\Users\benjamin>tlmgr
(null): fatal: Can't get long name for C:\texlive.
.
Can't locate TeXLive/TLConfig.pm in @INC (@INC contains: /texmf/scripts/texlive/tlpkg C:\texlive\2009\tlpkg\tlperl\lib C:/texlive/2009/tlpkg/tlperl/lib .) at C:\texlive\2009\texmf\scripts\texlive\tlmgr.pl line 78.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at C:\texlive\2009\texmf\scripts\texlive\tlmgr.pl line 78.


... So I turned crazy, I lost hours, even days trying to get things to work, I promised never to touch a windows machine anymore in my whole life etc. (I'm usually a — very happy — Mac user...)
Finally I did a last try "avec l'énergie du désespoir" (as we say in french), uninstalled everything on the PC, reinstalled windows 7 and everything from scratch, and I did a normal admin install for all users, being logged as "admin2". But once again, it wasn't working for me, I couldn't even launch TexWorks, nor anything. At that moment, I logged myself as "admin1", and I was surprised to see that it was indeed working : I even had the pleasure of seeing that good old "sample2e.dvi" on my computer's screen ! Puzzled, I created a new "standard user" account : it was also working ! This is quite humiliating... : every account but mine ("admin2") has right to do some TeXing... 

My guess is that the install script isn't able to deal with the fact that there are two admins on the machine, or am I missing something ?

Can someone report a successful install in a similar situation (= Windows (7) with two admin accounts) ? Is it actually supposed to work ? 

What should I do ? I don't even think that decreasing the second admin's privileges to "standard user" just for the time of the install would do the trick (I tried once, maybe I'm gonna try once again, but well...), I have the impression that the second account must be created as "standard" and kept that way until the installation of TexLive, and I'm not sure that one can then raise the privileges to admin without ruining everything...

any help would be *very* appreciated !...
(& thanks anyway for reading this long story...)

benjamin