Windows Installer not working properly.

Hello,

So I was messing around with the uninstall a program feature and may have gotten a little overzealous as it seemed I uninstalled the windows installer. Almost every program won't open now including MS office, 3DS Max, IE, firefox, etc. Office programs fail throwing Error 1719: The Windows Installer Service could not be accessed. Several programs simply do nothing when ran for example IE. Firefox freezes up as soon as it tries to load any tabs. Many program suggest they just aren't installed at all when I try to run them. When I try to go control panel -> programs and features and hit the uninstall a program link nothing happens.

One main issue that I am running into is people keep suggesting cleanup utilities but I can't install anything new at all so they just fail.

Some programs still work though! Visual Studio C# 2010 still works fine along with a couple ftp programs and Opera (which is how I was able to post this post).

I have tried installing random things like notepad++, reinstalling Firefox, etc but they all fail with Opera throwing the error "Error when initializing the file dialog: 0xFFFF Internal program error." before the installer can even start.

I have tried every single trick in these forums and several others I lost track of...
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315353
http://en.kioskea.net/forum/affich-3...-not-be-access

I would like to note that reinstalling windows is essentially not an option and I don't even have the windows 7 install disc (away from my house for a couple of weeks). Also, no restore points available.

Any help appreciated, thanks.

Try this first. Not optimistic but:
Open the start menu, and type, in the search box: “services.msc”.
Scroll down to the Windows Installer service.
Double click on it and stop it. Then restart it or, if it is on Manual (mine is by default) just start it.

P.S. Later.

I can see you have had a host of suggestions on another forum. Mine was not among them ! But I do think you are going to have to wait until you return home and manage a reinstall.

Hey, I looked at the service and restarted it but it still didn't change anything

However, I did find it interesting that when I first went to the services panel it said the Windows Installer service was not started so I was hopeful haha. But interesting idea, thanks!

But ha, I won't be home for several months and this is the computer I work on so I need this fixed asap.

Alright, I don't see it under OS Features, nor can I find a download link for Windows Installer 5.

Grab the 4.5 installer from http://www.microsoft.com/download/en...ang=en&id=8483 and that should fix most of the issues. Windows 7 comes with 5.0 already installed... I then suggest you run Windows update and search for optional updates. It should offer to MSI 5 as one of them...

Hey Kougar. So I have already "fixed" this issue but I tried to do both of the things you suggested when it was still broken. First off, there is no download for Windows Installer 5 because it is not redistributable so that's no good at all. And yes, I did have installer 5 when windows 7 was first installed.

As for 4.5, I downloaded and tried every installer they had at the place you linked and they all failed before even running because the corrupted windows installer on my machine would not let them for various reasons, thinking it was not compatible or just broken.

Windows updates also failed, I suspect because the corrupted installer was giving them issue, but at any rate simply wouldn't update.

I eventually did a repair in place reinstall of windows, or an "upgrade repair", that sort of worked. I still ended up having to reinstall many of my major programs though. My suggestion to anyone else with this issue is to just give it up and reinstall everything if the command line and registry fixes aren't doing it for you.

Thanks for your help though Kougar.