Window live mail.....apparently hates me.

Hi. I'm new here so let me start by saying thank you for any help you can give me.

I've been using wlm for a long time, since I have many email accounts with comcast and wanted to pull them all into one convenient place.

It worked great for years, then last week it did the following:

When I click on mail to open the program...it would start opening....then ghost in the background and give me a message that it could not be opened, unknown error. I tried several suggestions from the web on how to fix and none worked.

Finally I got it to open once and took the opportunity to back up my mail, contacts, etc.

That was the last time it would open.

So....I uninstalled it. Rebooted. Cleaned the registry. Rebooted. Ran Windows Install Cleanup. Rebooted.

As far as I could tell all of it had been removed.

Then I tried to download and install WLE 2011.
No Go. Starts to install then....

window pops up saying: Couldn't install programs
please try installing windows live programs again.
show details:
an unknown error has occured.
Error: 0x800b003
Source: WaitForCatalog

So I tried to install an older version (2009) and it starts to install....asks me which progams to install (I choose all of them) says some programs already installed....
continues with install.....all seems fine....then says done, BUT the 5 programs it tried to install all have red X's....I click on the mail red x and it says Mail couldn't be installed because we had trouble installing these requirements:
Microsoft Application Error Reporting
Try installing windows live programs again. Programs were not installed because the installation was cancelled. aborted0x80004004.
Microsoft Visual Studio Runtime
(same message)
Microsoft Live communications platform invalid advice flags
(same message) an unknown error occured hr:0x80040001

Similar messages for each of the programs.

Ultimately what I was trying to do was just uninstall the proram and re-install from scratch, then move my old mail, contacts, etc. back in.

Any ideas?

And I apologize for such a long message.

Tom

Welcome Tom
Rather than waste time trying to fix WLM, which according to many members, is not the best mail client, I would try one of these.
Personally, I think Thunderbird would be a good choice
Top 11 Free Email Programs for Windows - About Email

If you insist on WLM, I would try to download Ccleaner and run the cleaner. I think remnants of the old install are still present. In addition do not use and reg cleaners etc.

I'd be up for using another program BUT I don't want to lose all the old mail and contact information etc. Ideas?
Still don't know why an uninstall and re-install is such a hassle.

And I did run Ccleaner....cleanup and reg cleaner.

thanks!
Tom

This probably won't lead anywhere, but a while back I had a weird problem with Windows Installer that might be causing your problem. Basically the security settings and ownership properties of my Windows Installer got whacked and I couldn't install hardly anything. To see if this is causing it, go to Computer, open your main drive (usually C:\) then open to the folder Windows. Now there's a folder inside there called "Installer" but it's hidden (and even showing hidden files won't reveal it for some reason) So once you're in that folder, go to the address bar at the top and type \Installer at the end (so it looks something like C:\Windows\Installer) then Right click on an empty space (so you don't select any of the folders) and go to properties. Click the Security tab and make sure there is an entry for SYSTEM there. If there isn't, you've got a problem, and I can guide you through fixing it. If there is, then it's definitely not a problem with Windows Installer, and I can't help you but usually mail programs have import/export options. I just wouldn't really know because I don't use any mail clients. Hope you get it fixed though!

Thanks for the idea. I checked it and all seems fine. At this point I'd try anything. As I said to the earlier poster.....I will be happy to use another mail client.....but I need to know if it can import old mail, contacts, etc from files on the desktop since the wlm program is gone.

To be clear....the last time I got wlm to open I exported my saved mail and contacts to the desktop.

Help! Anyone?

Well I think you can install more than one mail client at a time. Install a couple that you think you might like to use and see if they can import those files. If not, try different ones. You can also check the support pages for the various programs to find out about their import features. If none of them let you import what you want (unlikely) then you're probably out of luck, as far as I can help.