As I’ve mentioned before, Error 1603 during an installation can be almost anything. It’s a generic error and you have to dig into the logs to find out what really happened.
For example, a customer reported getting 1603 during an install. So we looked into the %TEMP%\Autodesk_Softimage_x64_Install.log file, and found this:
2010/12/13:15:46:24 Administrator DEADBEEF Install Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable (x86) Failed Installation aborted, Result=1603
Now that we knew it was the VCREDIST, we looked into %TEMP%\vcredist_x86_2005.log and found out that problem was that the Softimage install was blocked because installer could not remove an old version of VC++ 2005 Redistributable:
MSI (s) (98:3C) [18:28:15:187]: Product: Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable -- Error 1714.The older version of Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable cannot be removed. Contact your technical support group. System Error 1612. Error 1714.The older version of Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable cannot be removed. Contact your technical support group. System Error 1612.
Error 1714 and google led me to the solution: rename the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\UserData\S-1-5-18\Components\F942F94A19C0F79468FD2B85E5E8677B.
After that, we were able to remove Visual C++ 2005 redistributable from the Control Panel, and then Softimage installed ok.
eX-SI 
If you get the […] Result=1603 […] error, it could also be a install destination folder problem. Had the same and just installed SI without changing the dir on my main partition – maybe it helps someone.
I couldn’t find the registry entry in my Win7. Is it another one or the same for this SO?
Thanks.
Antonio.