ArcGIS Pro silent install parameters - licensing setting only reflected in New install but not at Upgrade

[tamasoz]

Hi All,

We have been having a bit of an issue packaging ArcGIS Pro. Everything works as expected/described in any related ESRI documentation yet this matter with licencing settings via silent install parameters just not playing nice if we try to upgrade from an earlier version.

If we install our packaged ArcGIS Pro on a freshly imaged Windows desktop - it is all good, whatever we set for licensing in the silent install parameters - that is just there pre-configured at the first start.

But if we try deploying the package to an existing Pro installation - again everything is fine but the licencing settings under Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\ESRI\ArcGISPro\Licensing just not reflecting those values we would like to see. Whilst under the Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ESRI\ArcGISPro\Licensing we can see the registry reflections of our prefered settings coming out from the silent install parameters.

We tried just deleting all ESRI related registry settings both from HKCU and HKLM with a script prior the installation of the MSI's - that did not help either and the previous versions licence settings just turn up again under Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\ESRI\ArcGISPro\Licensing section - we have no idea where those are being restored from - and why...

Unfortunately, we do need to change licencing regime from concurrent to named user as well as having a new licence server URL. We are installing the ArcGIS Pro per-machine using the following silent install command:

msiexec.exe /i "c:\arcgistemp\ArcGISPro.msi" ALLUSERS=1 ACCEPTEULA=YES SOFTWARE_CLASS=Viewer CHECKFORUPDATESATSTARTUP=0 ADMIN_SETTINGS_PATH="\\XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX" AUTHORIZATION_TYPE=NAMED_USER LOCK_AUTH_SETTINGS=FALSE ARCGIS_CONNECTION=TRUE PORTAL_LIST="https://XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX" ESRI_LICENSE_HOST=xyzxyzxyzxyz LICENCE_URL=”https://xyzxyzxyzxyzxyz”

We do not lock the licensing using LOCK_AUTH_SETTINGS - but if that solves our problem, we might just introduce that. But in general - we are really not sure where are those previously used licensing values are coming into the HKCU entry - and we are also not sure why our settings only honored in the HKLM yet not propagating adequately to the HKCU.

If anyone could shed some light, give us some pointers - that would be very much appreciated.

Thank you

Tamas

[RichardDaniels]

HKEY Current User is stored in the users profile. If you looked in HKCU registry when different users are logged into the same computer you will see different registry settings.

When you run an MSI install with ALL User = 1 the installation cannot, overwrite individual HKCU registry settings because it is running as the System account. 

By design, HKCU overrides HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.

[RichardDaniels]

In regards to your installation package, one way to get around some of the installer flags is to use Orca to edit the MSI directly. Most or all the flags you may set at the Command Line can be found in the Properties Table within your MSI (turns out an MSI is just a database file ;-).

1. If you are seeing many users with HKCU values within their registry it is because you have  Per User installations.  This is Bad since it causes the issues you describe and make managed deployments difficult. 

2. We need a script to iterated through all users in HKEY_USERS and deleted HKEY_USERS\<unique user GUID Here>\Software\ESRI\ArcGISPro\Licensing. An example of is idea can be found at recursion - Registry - HKEY_USERS Recursively Delete Key (VBS) - Stack Overflow

[tamasoz]

@RichardDaniels thank you for the answers.

Turned out that by deleting all HKCU entries from ESRI (as well as HKLM) using the packaged script (PowerShell) made no change. I think that those are removed by the uninstall process anyway.

What I noticed though that ESRI registry entries do show up under the .DEFAULT user as well (Windows 10 Enterprise). Whilst right now I cannot tell if those values are staying there after uninstall (can't remember) but I can see that those values are the same as the current user ones - if the HKLM registry entries are different than the HKCU ones then these .DEFAULT registry settings are identical for the HKCU and not from HKLM.

[RichardDaniels]

Just remember that HK_Current User is just a shallow copy of what is in HK_Users. On my Windows 11 computer the Default user hive the ESRI folder only has an Updater subfolder...no keys regarding licensing.

Computer\HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Software\ESRI\Updater

[tamasoz · Accepted solution]

Right, so HKCU it is only a shallow copy of the HK_users. 

I was thinking that the .DEFAULT user entries are set by desktop policies, so something was messed up there with a previous release. I have opened the NTUSER.DAT file with Regedit and then I saw that values there are not the same as what I have under .DEFAULT user - and was not able to find out why or what.

This was the point when I officially gave up on this struggle 🙂 and I proudly handed the whole problem back to the client and its glorious and global IT provider. The problem I have been dealing with is clearly not an ESRI/ArcGIS Pro issue, more of the underlying enterprise environment.

@RichardDaniels - thanks for the advice.

[TamasGIS]

Replying just to keep my ex-corporate account's forum post to link to my private forum account.