I ran into a problem recently where I tried to install a program on my Windows XP machine and I got an error related to the Windows Installer service, namely –
The Windows Installer Service Could Not Be Accessed
After trying many solutions, I finally got the program to install and fixed the Windows Installer error. Depending on your Windows Operating System Version, the solution could be different. In this article, I will go through all the solutions I tried and hopefully one of them will work!
Method 1 – Reregister MSIEXEC
Make sure you are logged on as administrator and then click on Start, Run and type in the following command:
msiexec.exe /unregister
Press Enter and then type this command:
msiexec /regserver
If you are running a 64-bit version of Windows, you will need to type the following command:
%windir%\Syswow64\Msiexec /regserver
Both commands should complete successfully. Now restart the computer and try to install the program again. If this didn’t work, continue reading!
Method 2 – Reinstall Windows Installer
You can also try to repair the problem by reinstalling Windows Installer! Pretty ironic eh! The first thing we want to do is rename some of the current windows installer files before we download the new ones.
Click on Start, Run and type in the following commands below. Press Enter after each command.
cd %windir%\system32
attrib -r -s -h dllcache
ren msi.dll msi.old
ren msiexec.exe msiexec.old
ren msihnd.dll msihnd.old
Next, you want to download the latest version of Windows Installer. We can do that from the Microsoft Download Center.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/default.aspx
Type in Windows Installer in the search box and find the latest version, which will be called Windows Installer X.X Redistributable. Once installed, restart your computer.
Method 3 – Repair Install
If neither of those two methods fixed the Windows Installer problem, you will most likely have to do a repair install of the OS.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/978788
If you have had this problem and fixed it another way, post a comment here and let us know!
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