66. How Do I Reinstall The Windows Installer
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:
55. How Do I Repair My Windows XP Installation.
- Click the Start button.
- From the Start menu click Run.
- In the Run dialog box type: cmd
and press Enter.
- The Command Prompt window will now
appear.
- In the Command Prompt window type the
following pressing Enter 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
- After Exiting from the
Command Window Reboot your PC.
- The Windows Installer should now automatically
be reinstalled.