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

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    After trying  many solutions, I finally got the program to install and fixed the Windows Installer error. Depending on your OS, 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.

    You can check out my previous post on how to perform a repair install of XP:

    http://www.online-tech-tips.com/computer-tips/how-to-fix-missing-or-corrupt-ntfssys-error-in-windows-xp/

    Microsoft also has a article on how to reinstall Windows XP if you need more detail:

    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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