Had this problem on a few machines during a failed upgrade. I found the fix here at Read, Deploy, Enjoy!. Here’s the link. Basically it involves setting the permissions to the STClient Login object under DCOM Config in your Component Services to to “Everyone”.
What I ran into was slightly different. The object wasn’t even showing up on a few computers. I think this is related to how the Communicator is installed from GPO. Especially the old versions if you had to use a ‘trick’ to get the MSI files. This could also be a problem if you have some variation of Roaming Profiles.
Here’s how to remedy the problem.
Step 1 – Uninstall ShoreTel Communicator under the problem users profile, delete all registry keys associated with it, delete the folder under Program Files or Program Files (x86).
Step 2 – Log in as a Local Administrator, or a Domain Admin that doesn’t have any special home profile folders or anything.
Step 3 – Install ShoreTel Communicator from the ShoreWare Director Page on your Server.
Step 4 – Reboot and log back in as the problem user and it SHOULD work correctly. If not follow the instructions on Read, Deploy, Enjoy!
My suspicion is that an installation task fails during an automated install and causes the DCOM object not to be created properly. This probably happens near the end of the install and doesn’t always trigger a failure in the install. Newer versions of Communicator may not use this object at all, so it may be a symptom of a downgrade procedure as well.