ShoreTel Communicator Not Installing Properly – Fixes

If you’ve got a new ShoreTel system install, there are a few things that can go wrong with installing Communicator on people’s machines. Several problems I’ve run into are the following:

• ShoreTel Communicator install isn’t writing the registry key. It seems to install fine otherwise.
• Communicator fails midway through the installation.
• Communicator demands to have .NET Framework 3.5 installed, but can’t download it.
• Some other dependency won’t install.
• Pushing Communicator out through Group Policy doesn’t work.
• Pushing Communicator out through Desktop Authority (or similar software) doesn’t work.
• Communicator asks for a password to install.

Most of these problems are not actually problems with ShoreTel Communicator, they’re security policy conflicts. Here’s how to remedy these 99% of the time.

• Turn off UAC in Vista if you can. This is a big one, it screws up some older versions of the install package. Most of the stuff UAC controls, you can control with group policy. This assumes you have a domain.
• Try to install Communicator from a local administrator account. Sometimes running it as Administrator won’t cut it, especially if you’ve got roaming profiles and such.
• Do a Full Uninstall of Communicator. You must be logged in as an Administrator account. I use the local Administrator account when I do this for speed reasons. Here are the steps:

Step 1– Uninstall Communicator the normal way. If this fails, just skip to the next step. If it succeeds, well you need to do the following steps anyway.

Step 2 – Delete the following folder: “C:Program FilesShoreline Communications”. Delete all of it. Use one of those disk wipe utilities if you have to. If ANYTHING is in here, this can cause the install to fail. If you see a Shoreline Teleworks folder here too, get rid of it.

Step 3 – Delete the following registry key: “HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareShoreline Teleworks”. Usually you’ll find one under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREShoreline Teleworks. You may also see a “Shoreware Communications” or similar key. This is usually because of an older install on the computer. Shouldn’t see this with a brand new install.

Step 4 – Go into Control Panel and click on Phone and Modem. You may have to set this up, just entire an area code, the number 1, and the number 9 in the blanks.

Step 5 – Once you have the Phone and Modem thing set up, click on the Advanced tab and make sure to delete any entry here with “ShoreTel” in the name. Normally you will see one entry: “ShoreTel Remote TAPI Service Provider”. If you see two like this, that’s why ShoreTel isn’t installing right, or isn’t working right once installed.

Step 6 – Click OK and Reboot your computer.

Step 7 – Once you’ve done this, log back into the computer under the same local administrator account and re-install Communicator. It should install just fine.

Step 8 – Log into the user’s account, run ShoreTel again and let it finish setting up.

• Sometimes it’s not Communicator or any security policies but a corrupt user profile. Remove the user profile and many times that will fix the problem as well.

I’ve found that if you get to step 8 of the “Full Uninstall” and it isn’t remembering settings, meaning it won’t write the registry values, that you need to turn UAC off if at all possible.You may need to delete the ShoreTel registry keys from the current user as well. You might have to log in back as an administrator and load that user’s hive if your permissions don’t allow you to do this from their account.
A tool that can help is Privilege Authority from ScriptLogic. That’s cleared up a lot of problems for us. They have a free version that will help you solve this.  There is a ShoreTel Communicator rule in the Community. If you have a 64 bit version of Windows you’ll need to alter the path of where it looks for the program (just add (x86) to the Program Files part of the path).
If you’re upgrading your ShoreTel installation you’ll get some similar problems to above. The Full Uninstall method will clear these up too. One odd problem I’ve found when pushing Communicator through Group Policy or Desktop Authority is that it doesn’t always uninstall the old version correctly. You’ll know this happens when you see two entries for ShoreTel Communicator, and one may or may not have the icon filled in. This requires you to do a Full Uninstall and then delete all the registry keys. After you’ve done this you’ll need a tool like CCleaner to remove any entries in Programs and Features.