Error: The decompression of %s failed. There may not be enough free disk
space available in the TEMP directory.
Cause: You'll get this error sometimes when running installer programs that
use InstallShield. The install says "extracting files needed for
installation" and then fails with the aforementioned error message.
Re-running the installer usually does not help, but does sometimes.
The following suggestion is not a definitive solution - it is known to not
work sometimes no matter what you do.
1) Make sure you have the right amount of free hard drive space (always
check the obvious first.)
2) In Windows 95/98 check your autoexec.bat to see what your temp directory
is. In other words, look for a line like this: SET TEMP=C:\TEMP or something
like that. If you have no such line, it defaults to: C:\WINDOWS\TEMP which
does often cause problems over time. Make a separate C:\TEMP directory just
for running the installers on the client's machine. Or if you are using
Windows 2000 or Windows XP the default path for TEMP files is
%USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Temp (although XP is famous for still using
C:\WINDOWS\TEMP\ directory even though the global environment variable is
set elsewhere.)
** NOTE: Kerberos itself doesn't use a TEMP variable. It uses TMP. Set both
of these variables to different directories, i.e.:
SET TEMP=C:\TEMP
SET TMP=C:\TMP
That way you get Windows-generated temporary files in C:\TEMP, and Kerberos
tickets, your Netscape cache, etc. are set up to go in C:\TMP. It makes it
easy to quickly clear out C:\TEMP if Windows starts misbehaving on you. And
always clean out these directories periodically right after boot for good
measure. Make sure you don't clean them out while other applications are
running.
3) Make sure C:\TEMP really exists!
4) Make sure C:\TEMP is completely empty. In particular, look for folders
with '~' or '_' as the first character - those are symptoms of previously
failed installations.
5) Check the installer program: if it has its read-only file attribute set,
uncheck it. Right click on the file name and select "Properties" to get that
dialog box.
6) Reboot
7) Now try rerunning the installer.
If it still doesn't work, clean out C:\TEMP again and reboot.
** NOTE: As a last resort using Windows 2000 or Windows XP, try setting the
temp environment variables to a different directory other than the one the
system is trying to use. Once you set it to a different location (i.e.
C:\TEMP), reboot and in most cases it will install fine.
Lost Browser said:
Help I did a install of a program and when I went to install it this is what I got.
InstallShield Self-extracting EXE
The decompression of %s failed. There may not be enough free disk space
avaliable in the TEMP directory.
