File not found when referencing absolute path

Question

Running into a really strange problem that I haven't seen before. Trying to deploy Office 2016 but when referencing the UNC network path for setup.exe in cmd, the installer will say "The system cannot find the file specified".

Here is what I've noticed so far

C:\User\user.name> \\server\folder\Office\setup.exe
The system cannot find the file specified. 

Here is what happened when I copied the SAME folder to my desktop.

C:\User\user.name> \Desktop\Office\setup.exe
The system cannot find the file specified. 

C:\User\user.name> cd Desktop\Office
C:\User\user.name\Desktop\Office> setup.exe
Setup.exe starts installation process. 

And just out of curiosity, I tried the following:

C:\User\user.name\Desktop\Office> \\server\folder\Office\setup.exe
Setup.exe starts installation process. 

Navigating to the location in File Explorer and running setup.exe also starts the installation process with no problems.

My intention is to use PDQ to deploy Office 2016 to clients with the configuration.xml file by running the command below, but it seems like Office just doesn't want to work with me... Following PDQ's own KB article on deploying office and watching their video on deploying office and it seems to just work for them.

\\server\folder\Office\setup.exe /configure configuration.xml

Has anyone else experienced this issue? I haven't been able to find much information online yet. Any and all help is appreciated.

Answer 1

The common link between all your tests is that setup.exe needs to be run from within its own folder.

It's likely that the missing file message that you are getting is not for the setup.exe file itself, but for some other file that setup.exe is trying to access with the assumption that it exists within its current folder.

You could either always ensure that the current folder is correctly set when running setup.exe, or you may investigate further.

The best tool for investigating such a problem is Process Monitor.

There are many resources available for using it, for example:

• How to Use Process Monitor to Track Registry and File System Changes
• TribeLan Process Monitor