Install of components in COM+ fails if the user is not an administrator

When you install a component in a COM+ application, the following error message may occur:

Microsoft COM+, version 1.0 on Microsoft Windows 2000: Microsoft COM+, version 1.5 on Microsoft Windows XP:

This error message can occur if the person who is installing the component is not in the "Administrators group" in the computer.

To work around this problem, create a COM component exposing the methods to perform administrative tasks by using the COMAdmin objects COMAdminCatalog, COMAdminCatalogCollection, and COMAdminCatalogObject.

This COM component can then be hosted into a COM+ application that runs as an account with administrative privileges.

This application serves as an administrative proxy, which can be used (through scripting) by nonadministrative users to perform COM+ administrative tasks. However, Microsoft recommends that you do not enable a nonadministrator to do administrative tasks without special consideration.

For more information on automating COM+ administration, please see the "Automating COM+ Administration" topic in the Microsoft Platform SDK documentation.

Component installation in COM+ fails if the user who is installing the component is not in the Administrators group in the computer, even though that user has been added to Administrators role for "System Application" in Component Services explorer.

During component installation, COM+ writes some information in catalog files and this requires that the user has Administrator privileges.