http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=25476
--- Comment #6 from Rosanne DiMesio dimesio@earthlink.net 2011-01-06 11:35:45 CST --- This bug may be invalid.
What I have found is that if the problem doesn't happen the first time I try to run one of the apps after installing, it never happens in that wineprefix. Working wineprefixes can be copied--at the moment I have several, most of them created by copying one of the two that worked from the outset.
What I think may be the difference is that the working installs successfully activated during the install process, and the non-working ones didn't. Non-activated trial installs are supposed to have limited functionality, but all program features have been available in my working wineprefixes, and the 30 days are almost up.
As a test, I copied the tokens.dat and cache.dat files from a working wineprefix to a non-working one, and started Excel. I found that while setup.exe did start the first time (and quickly crashed), Excel also opened immediately, which it hadn't done before. The second time, setup did not start, but Excel complained about being unable to validate and shut down. After that the problem was gone (probably because the registry had finally been updated).
There may be a Wine bug in why activation works sometimes during installation and not others, but I suspect at least part of the reason may be that the Microsoft server will refuse to activate after a number (not sure how many) of attempts using the same product key.
Does any of that make any sense?