Windows Installer 3.1 Error

I continue to have trouble with Windows Installer 3.1. Obviously, it must be another crap piece of software issued by Microsoft to wreak damage and suffering on all technical savvy people. I would downgrade to version 3.0, but 3.1 is needed for alot of the 'Windows Update' installs. Lovely, I'm trapped. Thanks for the junk software, Microsoft.

The problem I encounter is always the same; I will initiate a software install, it will launch appropriately, then all of a sudden silently fail, giving no useful indication as to what went wrong. After exhaustively searching this topic, I found a solution that helped a great deal, which is detailed in an earlier post to this blog.

I do however still have the occasional problem with Windows Installer, so I set out to find a fix. I have discovered that starting and stopping the Windows Installer service before performing an install seems to prevent any problems I was previously experiencing.

Here's what you do:

Click on the Start Menu, and select Run. Type cmd into the open field, and click Open. This will launch a new command prompt for you to work with. Now, you want to start and stop the Windows Installer service. This can be accomplished by performing the following commands.

net start msiserver

net stop msiserver

If that doesn't help you, you can also try the following:

msiexec.exe /unregister

msiexec /regserver

Good luck!