Here's a reply to my own question;

I went to the SQL website and found that teh MSI for this Backward Compat
installation was not the most recent. I downloaded the one dated from April
of this year and the installation worked ! I don't get that message about
"the system administrator as set policies to prevent this installation"

Sometimes I just wish the Microsoft developers would spend more time on the
error messaging for their products. They cause such a lose of productivity
for us all when the errors are not correctly explained. That's my soap box
speech for today

--
Maz


"Spicy Mikey" wrote:

> here's one I haven't seen anyone talk about yet. It's happening on my test
> machine running Windows XP SP2. I'm trying to install the SQL 2005 Backward
> compatibility MSI so I can continue to use DMO in our VB6 application. The
> MSI is embedded in a WiSE installation. When it finishes, the DMO DLL is not
> registered. I tried to run the MSI outside the package to see if it gave me
> a clue of the problem. When I click on the SQLServer2005_BC.msi I get a plan
> message box that says "The system administrator has set policies to prevent
> this installation". What? I'm even doing it from the builtin Administrator
> ID. It's a vanilla installatiion of XP
>
> Anyone have an idea where to even start with this one?
>
> --
> Maz