I’m trying to geotag the photos from my brother’s wedding using a combination of Picasa and Google Earth. I’ve done this before many times but now I do all my work from a non-admin account under Windows XP, and I’m running into a problem.

When I click the Tools | GeoTag | Geotag in Google Earth menu item, for some reason MSI is launched trying to find the Google Earth.msi in a temp directory in the admin user’s Documents and Settings folder, which obviously my non-admin account doesn’t have the privs to read. The resulting dialog box says:

The feature you are trying to use is on a network resource that in unavailable.

Click OK to try again, or choose an alternate path to a folder containing the installation package ‘Google Earth.msi’ in the box below.

Of course, the box below contains only the path into the admin’s profile folder, and there’s no option to change it or browse for an alternative. If I click cancel, the box reappears.

I’m running the latest Google Earth and Picasa.

Apparently, I’m not alone. Way back in March, someone reported this same problem, and apparently the PhD’s over at the Googleplex are too busy counting their options to actually fix what is a very basic problem.

I will NOT run as admin to accommodate some shitty admin privs requirement in Google Earth, even if it means I can’t geotag my photos. But I WILL bitch about it at length. WTF, Google? Do you not test this stuff as a non-admin user? Is there some other more subtle cause which I’m not seeing?