Dueling Windows Installers on startup

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Guest

OS: XP, SP2, on a Dell Optiplex

During a standard hardening process on a workstation -- mostly changing
permissions from Everyone to Authorized Users, using an Administrator account
-- Symantec Internet Security 2005 quit working. Worked through the
recommended un- and reinstallation process, but the reinstall failed after a
screen said "loading Microsoft Re-distributables" and the error message said
that there may be a problem accessing Windows Installer. So I tried to fix
that, leading to my current situation where on startup, a Windows Installer
window appears and blinks repeatedly, while two buttons that say Windows
Installer flash on and off on the Start Bar. Eventually one button disappears
while the other blinks for a while, then both the button and window
disappear. I still can't reinstall Internet Security.

Here's what I've tried so far:

msiexec /unregister and reregister
Installer Cleanup Utility
Confirmed Manual staus of Windows Installer in Services
Cleared older files out of temp folders
Confirmed full permission for System and DCOM on C:\
Confirmed full permissions for Administrators on all registry hives

None of the fixes have changed anything; all I know is that it doesn't
happen in Safe Mode.

Can anybody tell me what's going on? I'm about ready to reinstall the OS,
but what bothers me is that I'm going to have to start redoing all my work
without knowing why I got the problem in the first place.

Thanks.
 
In case anybody's interested, I found out why I was getting the strange pair
of flashing windows. HP had some (non-useful) applications associated with
scanning and printing that were loading on startup, and screwing up the
installer apparently drove them crazy. Once I went into msconfig and took
them out of Startup, the startup problems went away. I never did fix Windows
Installer, and since I had already stumped both the Symantec and Dell support
technicians, I went ahead and reinstalled the operating system. At least NIS
2005 is working now.
 
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