When installing AuthLite on a Domain Controller, you receive a popup error stating:

Error while executing custom action: The directory service is busy.

and the install rolls back.

Each DC install runs a custom action which saves the latest definitions of the AuthLite objects to the AD schema. Even if you have the latest schema already and no changes need to be applied, AD may throw this error.

First steps

First, before troubleshooting AuthLite, you should make sure that there are no replication issues between your schema master and the DC you are installing on. When we get this condition in our test lab with VMs, sometimes restarting the Active Directory services on each of the DCs clears the error.

Apart from that, here are some ways to try and resolve this condition:

Option 1: Add registry key to the schema master

Support staff note: This procedure allegedly affects only Windows 2000, but we have repeated reports that it helped resolve the problem on 2003 and 2008 servers.

  • Determine the schema master, and add a registry key signifying that schema changes are allowed. This procedure is outlined in this Microsoft KB article
  • You must do the above on the schema master
  • Re-try the install.
  • If you still get the failure, please contact support and we can assist you.

Option 2: Manual schema installation