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Occasionally when installing software you may
receive an error message to the effect that 'Windows Installer
could not be accessed' or some similar message. This could
indicate that the Installer is actually damaged and needs to be
reinstalled. The following procedure will allow you to reinstall
the installer without having to completely reinstall Windows XP.
UPDATE
The instruction below are adequate for
systems running Windows XP with service pack 1 (SP1). However,
if you have updated your Windows Operating System to service
pack 2 (SP2) then you may find that you receive an error message
to the effect that
c:\windows\system32\dllcache
could not be found on your system. This basically means that you
are unable to continue with the instructions.
Although Microsoft have a redistributable
download of the Windows Installer 3.0 available it cannot be
used when Windows XP Service pack 2 (SP2) has been installed.
The reason being that SP2 already has the Windows Installer 3.0
software added and, because of file protection, would not allow
the Windows Installer file to be replaced.
To that end one is faced with two options
regarding the replacement of the Windows Installer. One can
either reinstall the Windows XP service pack 2 (SP2) (Obviously
it would be wise to 'uninstall' the service pack SP2 prior to
attempting to reinstall it, assuming, of course, the update
wasn't installed from a slipstreamed copy or from a boxed copy
of Windows XP including SP2) The alternative is to do a Windows
XP repair in order to reinstall the Windows Installer. To do a
'repair' see question 55. How Do I Repair My Windows XP
Installation.
1/ Click the Start button
2/ From the Start menu click Run
3/ In the Run dialog box type: cmd and press
Return
4/ The Command Prompt window will now appear
5/ In the Command Prompt window type the
following pressing Return after each entry:
attrib -r -s -h
c:\windows\system32\dllcache
cd
c:\windows\system32\
ren msi.dll msi.old
ren msiexec.exe msiexec.old
ren msihnd.dll msihnd.old
exit
6/ After Exiting from the Command Window Reboot
your PC
7/ The Windows Installer should now
automatically be reinstalled. |