Installing Google Chrome On Windows 2008 Server

After installing Windows 2008 Server or for that matter any flavor of Windows server, you will quickly realize that using Internet Explorer on that machine can be a real pain. Well Microsoft has every good intention about keeping the security very tight on the server and the default options set for Internet Explorer on Windows 2008 Server are too tight. I am not going to debate about security issues related to Internet Explorer.

I wanted to install Google Chrome browser just to avoid dealing with tight settings for IE. Well to start with I had to use IE anyways so I could access Google site to get installer. So I did and added Google.com to trusted sites list. So I started install of Google Chrome. After 3-4 seconds, installer threw an error that application is not properly formatted. I was like what application is not formatted. I seriously doubt that it had anything to do with Chrome installer being corrupt. From the dialog box I clicked on the button to see the details of the error and found the following message.

PLATFORM VERSION INFO
 Windows 			: 6.0.6001.65536 (Win32NT)
 Common Language Runtime 	: 4.0.30319.1
 System.Deployment.dll 		: 4.0.30319.1 (RTMRel.030319-0100)
 clr.dll 			: 4.0.30319.1 (RTMRel.030319-0100)
 dfdll.dll 			: 4.0.30319.1 (RTMRel.030319-0100)
 dfshim.dll 			: 4.0.31106.0 (Main.031106-0000)

SOURCES
 Deployment url : http://dl.google.com/update2/1.2.183.29/GoogleInstaller_en.application?
 Server		: downloads

ERROR SUMMARY
 Below is a summary of the errors, details of these errors are listed later in the log.
  * Activation of http://dl.google.com/update2/1.2.183.29/GoogleInstaller_en.application resulted 
   in exception. Following failure messages were detected: 
 + Your Web browser settings do not allow you to run signed applications.

ERROR DETAILS
 Following errors were detected during this operation.
  * [8/16/2010 7:17:04 PM] System.Deployment.Application.InvalidDeploymentException (Manifest)
   - Your Web browser settings do not allow you to run signed applications.
   - Source: System.Deployment
   - Stack trace:
   at System.Deployment.Application.ApplicationActivator.BrowserSettings.Validate(String manifestPath)
   at System.Deployment.Application.ApplicationActivator.PerformDeploymentActivation(Uri activationUri, 
   Boolean isShortcut, String textualSubId, String deploymentProviderUrlFromExtension, 
    BrowserSettings  browserSettings, String& errorPageUrl)
   at System.Deployment.Application.ApplicationActivator.ActivateDeploymentWorker(Object state)

The key to this error message was Your Web browser settings do not allow you to run signed applications.. Well security settings on IE was preventing the installer to complete the installation. So here is what you can do if you run into issue with installation of any applications on Windows 2008 Server that you download from internet.

• Goto the application web site.
• Click in Download button or link or what ever way the site provides to install the application. When you get the dialog box with options to Run or Save, Choose to Save it on your disk.
• Now goto folder where you saved the installer and launch it from there. This should now run without being under the context of IE security.

As usual, you just have to be careful with what you download and install on your server.