Repair Windows Installer Service in Vista (All Versions)

[Guest]

For all those unfortunate souls searching and Googling for how to repair the
Windows Installer Service, I have some info for you. A couple days ago I
tried to uninstall one of my apps and stalled on an error "Windows Installer
Service cannot be accessed". After many trials and errors trying to fix this
issue, I stumbled upon a new fix for this issue that has worked in all these
situations where the Windows Installer Service will not manually start and in
essense, not allow install or uninstall tasks to complete.

Here's the easy steps:
1. Go to a Windows Vista (Any Version) computer that has the Windows
Installer service running correctly and run regedit(Start-Run-Regedit)
2. Go to the location
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\msiserver
3. Right click on this key and select "Export" and save the key to a Flash
Drive or other.
4. Run sfc /scannow on the damaged Vista computer - you won't need the
install disk as it goes to backup files on your HD. Do not reboot when
complete
5. Double click saved .reg file from working machine and import registry
settings into damaged Vista computer.
6. Now reboot and try to install/uninstall

If many of you have success with this method, please post this fix around
the WWW as I went through over 1000 links with users having the same problem
and not being able to solve it. Shame on Microsoft, very sloppy. It would
have been so nice if Microsoft released Windows Installer 4.0 as a standalone
installation with Vista's release so I could have repaired it, most users
have been doing fresh installs to fix this. Get your act together
Microsoft!!!!

The CAT

 

[optigang]

I dont know other people using Vista system, most of the people i know
changed back for XP because Vist is really the worst of all systems. i want
to try with repairing windows installer, how can i do? is really there no
chance to install the windows installer service online for example?? Please
help, i cant install any programm anymore because of this!

 

[Glenhitch]

"The CAT" suggestions worked for me. Thanks for sharing "The
CAT" .....just to add (more like subtract to be exact) one need only
run the exported reg key on the damaged machine to "fix" the
issue...no need to restart nor to run the sfc /scannow.


If you cant get your own reg key from a friend running vista, then you
could try and use the "clean reg key I used" download here:
http://www.savefile.com/files/1315653

Note the file is about very small (about 6.7 kb), I named it :123.reg

Take care.

 

[PD43]

arty:this worked great. however i do not know if this is the case for
everyone, but just encase here goes. i started with checking the
windows installer service and trying to start it and set it back to
automatic. no luck. went to google to find solution, found your post.

Which is dated OCTOBER 3, 2007 - and that person hasn't been back here
since then.

So... who do you think you're talking to?

 

[PD43]

cat / glenhitch,

i will take the info the two of you have and what i have and upload an
updated post.

YO! MORON!

Look at the freaking date of those posts!

 

[mjappleton]

This solution didn't work for me. I did all the steps and replaced
the
registry key, but nothing happened, i kept getting the same error.

I have the problem kinda pinpointed though: at least in my case, it's
caused by one of the windows updates - i haven't figured out which
one
yet though. My next step will be install the updates one by one to
figure out which one is messing the whole thing up, but that takes a
lot of time


The weird thing is, with so many people complaining about it, howcome
haven't they issued a report about it yet... I'm seriously thinkin
bout going back to XP