TRADOS 2024 INSTALLATION PROBLEM. MESSAGE: "Access to the Registry key HKCU\SOFTWARE\SDL\Studio18\MachineSupport’ is denied”

Hello,

Here is a summary and detailed explanation of the problem.

SUMMARY :

My colleague Maud had Trados 2017 (floating version) on her PC. Trados 2017 was running fine.
Her PC runs Windows 11 Pro and is part of our local domain.

After deactivating/uninstalling Trados 2017, I tried to install Trados 2024 (single user version).
The installation seemed to go smoothly, almost to the end.
Then I got an error message and couldn't run the program.

After several unsuccessful attempts, I reinstalled Trados 2017 but now, it doesn't run under Maud's profile.

DETAILS:

I worked from Maud's account, which is a domain user's account without admin rights.
So, I used the domain administrator's credentials when prompted.

This is what I did :

1/ I deactivated and uninstalled Trados 2017 (floating version).

2/ I found that Trados 2021 was also installed (without an active licence, or with a trial licence).
I also uninstalled it.

3/ As several versions of Trados had already been installed on the PC, I thought it would be a good idea to clean things up a bit.

(a) In Maud's profile, I deleted the 'AppData\Local\SDL' and 'AppData\Roaming\SDL' directories, of which I kept backups.
I didn't delete anything else, nor in the other users' profiles, nor in ProgramData, nor anywhere else.

(b) In the registry, I deleted the SDL keys: 'HKLM/Software/SDL', 'HKLM/Software/Win3264Node/SDL' and 'HKU/[users' SIDs]/Software/SDL'.
In my experience, deleting this type of key doesn't pose any problem (at worst, it's useless) but I may be wrong, concerning Trados.
However, I didn't dig any deeper nor delete anything else into the registry.
 
4/ I then installed Trados 2024. Installation went smoothly (or it seemed so), but a little quickly.
At the end of the process (during the end-user configuration screens), I received an error message.
It reads "Access to the Registry key HKCU\SOFTWARE\SDL\Studio18\MachineSupport' is denied".

Error message during Trados Studio 2024 setup showing 'Access to the Registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USERSOFTWARESDLStudio18MachineSupport' is denied.

5/ In Regedit, I saw that the registry key 'HKCU/Software/SDL' and ALL its subkeys had not been created, which is not normal.
I created the 'SDL' key by hand, and tried to uninstall/reinstall Trados 2024 again, but it made no difference.

6/ Since the problem was obviously in relation with registry access rights, I grant local administrator rights to Maud's account (via the control panel) and tried to uninstall/reinstall Trados 2024 one more time.
That didn't help either.

7/ At that point, I decided to uninstall Trados 2024 and ask for help. I also reset the user's account as a standard user.

8/ Then, I reinstalled the old Trados 2017. The installation went smoothly, but Trados 2017 now refuses to run under Maud's account.
It runs under the administrator account, it also runs under the account of a previous user (not yet deleted), but it won't run under Maud's account.
When you click on the icon, absolutely nothing happens.

9/ Now, I have to reinstall Trados 2024, but I don't want to create a new profile for Maud, as this would lead to other problems that might require me to reinstall Windows.

Thank you in advance for your help.

Best regards,
Pascal DE VERNATI
Systems Admin, IIF-IIR, Paris, France



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[edited by: RWS Community AI at 2:43 PM (GMT 0) on 4 Nov 2024]
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  • Hello Ana-Maria,

    Thank you for your suggestion. Unfortunately, it came too late.
    The only workaround I found was to create a new user profile (at the AD level) and use it instead of the old one. Now Trados works.

    However, it's a very frustrating situation, as I haven't been able to find the cause of the problem. For some reason, something (a registry key/value? some file?...) prevented Trados from working under the original user profile, but I don't know what (and didn't have the time to investigate more deeply).

    However, I assume it has something to do with license management, copyright protection and so one, because in the past, I've never had any problems with the Trados installation process, but always with licenses.

    I have nothing against proprietary software, but this kind of side effect should be better documented.

    Regards,

    Pascal De Vernati
    IIF-IIR / iifiir.org

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