Alexander’s Blog

If you try to add or remove a program that uses Windows Installer Microsoft Software Installation (MSI) package file (.msi), you may have seen the following error.

I ran into this when I was trying to remove Microsoft AntiSpyware Beta 1 software from Add or Remove Programs in Windows XP. You may experience this error with Microsoft Office or any other software that uses .msi to install a program. The reason for the error is typically corrupted or missing Windows Installer files on your computer. There are a couple of solutions to fix the problem. You can either try to re-register (Plan A) or re-install (Plan B) the Windows Installer.

Plan A
To re-register Windows Installer, first locate the Msiexec.exe file on your computer (typically in C:\Windows\System32) and then verify in the registry that the location is pointing to the correct path. Run regedit.exe and go to this location: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSIServer. Double-click on the ImagePath entry in the right-hand pane and make sure it matches with the actual path for Msiexec.exe, if not correct the path. Typically the enry would look like this: C:\Windows\System32\Msiexec.exe /V. Reboot your computer into Safe Mode and at the command prompt run msiexec /regserver to re-register the Windows Installer and then reboot your computer in normal mode.

Plan B
If Plan A doesn’t fix the problem then try re-installing the Windows Installer. Reboot in Safe Mode, rename the following three files and then reboot your computer.

msi.dll
msiexec.exe
msihnd.dll

Windows XP already includes Windows Installer version 2.0 but you can download Windows Installer version 3.1 for Windows XP here. For other operating systems, such as NT, Windows 2000, or Windows 9x, go to the downloads page on TechGalaxy.net and download the Windows Installer version 2.0. Reboot your computer in the normal mode. For more information on this topic, check out Microsoft’s KB article Q315346.

More info…

You can enable logging of Group Policy Objects by following one of the two methods listed below. The log file will be created in the %windir%\temp folder. To locate the Temp folder type cd %temp% at the command prompt. The name of the logging file is randomly selected. It begins with “msi” and ends with a .log extension, e.g. MSIef63.LOG.

Enabling Windows Installer Logging Manually
1. Start the registry editor, regedit.exe.
2. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Installer.
3. Create a New, String Value called Logging. You will notice that the type is REG-SZ.
4. Double-click Logging and enter voicewarmup for Value data.
5. Click OK and close registry editor.

The letters in the value data field can be in any order. Here’s what the letters stand for.

v - Verbose output
o - Out-of-disk-space messages
i - Status messages
c - Initial UI parameters
e - All error messages
w - Non-fatal warnings
a - Start up of actions
r - Action-specific records
m - Out-of-memory or fatal exit information
u - User requests
p - Terminal properties
+ - Append to existing file
! - Flush each line to the log

WARNING: The above change to the registry should be temporary only for troubleshooting. If you leave this value in the registry it will have adverse effect on system performance and disk space. Each time you use the Add/Remove Programs in Control Panel, it will create a new Msi*.log file.

Enabling Windows Installer Logging through Group Policies
You can also enable logging with Group Policies by modifying the appropriate Group Policy. Go to Computer Configuration, Administrative Templates, Windows Components, and select Windows Installer. Double-click Logging and then click Enabled. In the Logging box, enter the options you want to log, e.g. vmeap.

According to Microsoft’s KB article Q223300 this only applies to Windows 2000/NT/Me/98SE/95. However, this also works for Windows Server 2003. If you have tried enabling the logging in Group Policy and can’t get it to work, use the manual method by modifying the registry as shown above.

Last week I got an e-mail from a family member who wasn’t able to install a program she purchased a year ago. The software is called “Creating Keepsakes - Scrapbook Designer”. She was getting an error message “Error 1606. Could not access network location . All users\”. She went to the vendor’s Web site looking for solutions but didn’t find any, she also e-mailed them 3 times but never heard back from them. I told her of a solution that worked and I think it’s worth documenting because this error can occur under various circumstances. For example, you may encounter this error if you try to install or uninstall Norton AntiVirus 2003. Sometimes the path and location is given in the error message, which may point to several different paths, such as C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Desktop, or C:\My Documents\My Pictures.

Microsoft’s KB article 315352 mentions that this error occurs if you upgrade from Windows 98 SE or Windows Me to Windows XP, or Windows XP SP1. However, variations of this error are also known to exist when you upgrade from Windows 98 to Windows 2000. Here’s a step-by-step solution that has worked for me.

1. Click on Start, Run and then type REGEDIT.EXE to start the Registry Editor.

2. Navigate to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders.

3. Double-click the Common Administrative Tools Value Name and set the data value to %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Start Menu\Programs\Administrative Tools.

4. Navigate to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders.
Notice that this path is different than the path in step 2. This is “Shell Folders”, in step 2 you went to “User Shell Folders”.

5. Double-click the Common Administrative Tools Value name and verify that the Value data is set to the
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Start Menu\Programs\Administrative Tools.

6. Close the Registry Editor.

7. Restart your computer.