Tag Archives: windows registry keys

OfficeWriter

Installation Error 1327

What’s the problem?

I was working with a customer who was faced with the following error message during her installation of OfficeWriter: Error 1327: Invalid Drive: H:

When she looked in ‘My Computer’, there was no H drive on hard disk or mapped to a network location. She was baffled as to why the installation was trying to point to an non-existent drive.

What’s going on?

Error 1327 occurs during any basic installation when there is an incorrect value in the Data field in some of the Microsoft Windows registry keys. This issue is addressed by Adobe in this article and by Robert LaThanh in this post.

How to resolve the issue:
  1. Open regedit and navigate to each of the following registry keys:
    HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders
    HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders
  2. Check to see if any of data values point to a drive that is not mapped to in your computer (either on hard disk or a network location). In particular, look to see if any of the data values point to the drive that the 1327 error mentioned.
    In the case of the customer, one of the data values in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders was set to H:\Favorites.
  3. If there are any incorrectly mapped data values, modify the values.
    The customer changed the value from H:\Favorites to %USERPROFILE%\Favorites and that resolved the Error 1327 issue.

Here is a sample of what the particular corrected registry key should look like:

 

WARNING: When modifying the registry, make sure you back it up!

Since the solution involved modifying registry values, it was important to make a back up of the registry, so I sent her the Windows 7 instructions for backing up the registry. Microsoft also has articles for backing up Windows XP and Windows Vista.