Time to reinstall? Windows Installer Service could not be accessed!

[BillW50]

I am working on a Dell XPS 400 which has Windows Media Center 2002
installed. IE7 and Outlook 2000 wouldn't load. Avast 4.8 turned up nothing.
Ad-Aware 2007 wouldn't run or reinstall with Ad-Aware 2008. Got Spybot
installed and it turned up with "virtumonde.sci". Got rid of it which fixed
the first error message below and IE and Outlook 2000 started to function
again.

~~~~~~~~~~

RegisterClassObject failed: hRes = 0x800706BA
The RPC server is unavailable.
Maximun retry attempts exceeded

~~~~~~~~~~

The Windows Installer Service could not be accessed. This can occur if the
Windows Installer is not correctly installed. Contact your support personal
for assistance.

~~~~~~~~~~

Disk Management
You do not have access rights to Logical Disk Manager on...

~~~~~~~~~~

Now the last two error messages pop up. The Windows Installer message pops
up just about with anything I try to install. Reregistering the service
doesn't help, nor did reinstalling Windows Installer. Checked the
permissions under Regedit and System, administrator, and user are all ok.
Also Outlook 2000 email links won't work most of the time.

I am a big believer that *most* systems never need to be reformatted and can
be fixed. Although I am considering maybe in this case, it might be best. As
I haven't figured out how to solve this one yet. Since the hard drive is a
SATA one, none of my BartPE boot devices will touch the hard drive. Although
I got Puppy Linux to read it, but won't write to it. So I copied everything
to another drive. So theoretically, I can always copy everything back it
should be back as is. Since I can't install most things, none of my drive
copy and partition programs will work either. Any thoughts?

--
Bill
2 Gateway MX6124 - Windows XP SP2
3 Asus EEE PC 701G4 ~ 2GB RAM ~ 16GB-SDHC
2 Asus EEE PC 702G8 ~ 1GB RAM ~ 16GB-SDHC
Windows XP SP2 ~ Xandros Linux - Puppy - Ubuntu

 

[Ron Badour]

Try this for the installer problem: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315353

--
Regards

Ron Badour
MS MVP
Windows Desktop Experience

 

[BillW50]

In Ron Badour typed on Mon, 19 Jan 2009 11:25:25 -0600:

Try this for the installer problem: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315353
--
Regards

Ron Badour
MS MVP
Windows Desktop Experience

Thanks Ron. That was actually the first thing I tried. No errors or
anything, but it didn't fix it either.

--
Bill
2 Gateway MX6124 - Windows XP SP2
3 Asus EEE PC 701G4 ~ 2GB RAM ~ 16GB-SDHC
2 Asus EEE PC 702G8 ~ 1GB RAM ~ 16GB-SDHC
Windows XP SP2 ~ Xandros Linux - Puppy - Ubuntu

 

[JayB]

i have seen malware cause the symptons you describe.
what processes are running in the background?
what startup items are shown by hijackthis?

 

[BillW50]

In JayB typed on Mon, 19 Jan 2009 18:12:14 -0500:

i have seen malware cause the symptons you describe.
what processes are running in the background?
what startup items are shown by hijackthis?

Yup, I believe you are right JayB. Although I believe it is going to end up
just getting a reformat here so I don't have to worry about what malware it
has. Windows doesn't even recognize Avast as a anti-virus checker (on other
computers it is) and Windows pops up a balloon that your system maybe
unprotected. There are so many signs that something is really wrong. Like
System Restore wasn't working either and I had a fight to get that to work
too.

So JayB, thank you very much for your help. I did copy everything over to an
USB hard drive (with Puppy Linux since it was the only thing I had that I
could see the SATA drive with) and I will study it to see what I can find.

--
Bill
2 Gateway MX6124 - Windows XP SP2
3 Asus EEE PC 701G4 ~ 2GB RAM ~ 16GB-SDHC
2 Asus EEE PC 702G8 ~ 1GB RAM ~ 16GB-SDHC
Windows XP SP2 ~ Xandros Linux - Puppy - Ubuntu