M$ Strikes Back!!!

[Jammrock]

I posted this at The Flamethrower as well:

I ran into a rather interesting M$ catch-22/oxymoron today.

Client has a broken Windows Installer, I can therefore not install anything that requires it, i.e. Office XP and Cisco IPTV. Jump out to our software share drive and run the Windows Installer cleanup tool...error:

Windows Installer is not operating properly, this program cannot run. Please see your system administrator.

WTF! I am the system administrator! Run it again, same error. Reboot. Same error. So basically, to uninstall the Windows Installer you must use Windows Installer. What's wrong with this picture? Is it just me or is this the dumbest damn logic?

I finally got it fixed by nuking WI from the registry, upgrading to Win2k SP3 (which DOES NOT use the Windows Installer), and replacing all the WI DLL's in teh DLLCACHE, then deleting them all from System32 to replace them from the DLLCACHE.

Sometimes I wonder about M$ logic.

Jammrock

[Technoid]

well they ARE untrained monkeys, what did you expect?

[The PIT]

Like office run the setup programme to uninstall it.

[Kooldino]

:-(
That's pretty sad. Unfortunately, I've run into similar probs before.

[Kurt]

I just recently installed a LiteOn USB CDRW on an ultraprotable laptop. No CD-Rom, no floppy, no NIC, running Win98SE. Guess where the drivers for the USB CDRW were? On a CD-Rom...

[Marshmallowman]

bit late now, but hear is a link to an MSI installer fixer..

http://download.microsoft.com/download/msninvestor/Patch/1.0/WIN98/EN-US/mcrepair.EXE

[lindberg]

Originally posted by Kurt
I just recently installed a LiteOn USB CDRW on an ultraprotable laptop. No CD-Rom, no floppy, no NIC, running Win98SE. Guess where the drivers for the USB CDRW were? On a CD-Rom...

Atleast it's better than on a floppy...

[William]

IIRC, you can force the windows installer to fix itself by removing it's service (which, for some reason I've never fathomed lives in add/remove hardware section of W2K).

(I could be misremembering, it's a long time since I fiddled with that)

[The PIT]

You're right William a lot of other stuff hides there as well.