Recently, the win8 system encountered a 2503 error when installing Node. js and ArcGIS software. Later, it was discovered that the Win8 permission system was at fault. The solution seems primitive, but it works very well:
1) Go to the C: \ windows \ installer path and find the msi of the installer. If your installation package does not extract the msi file to this path, copy the corresponding msi and CAB files to this path, such as the ArcGIS installer.
2) Open the cmd program as an administrator
3) Enter "C: \ windows \ installer \ xxx. msi" in the command line and press Enter. As you can see below, if your msi installer is not in the path C: \ windows \ installer, the command execution will fail. Therefore, if your program decompression path is not here, copy it to this path and then install it.
To sum up, this is still a problem caused by operating system permissions, even if your current user is an administrator. Use the administrator privilege to open cmd and run the msi installer in the path C: \ windows \ installer to solve the 2503 error.