I did all of the steps mentioned below. rebooted windows installer is started and automatic. I still get the same error. Windows service cannnot be accessed.
I would do a complete reformat but I have so must stuff that I cannot afford to lose.
Please anyone out there help.
You will have a friend for life
Microsoft have the worst ie.e non existent support of any company in the world. I say nationalise it and give it to competent technicians who can solve issues, not just try to sell you an upgrade. I really wish that there was an alternative to MS. I hate vista
Repair Windows Installer Service in Vista (All Versions)
For all those unfortunate souls searching and Googling for how to repair the
Windows Installer Service, I have some info for you. A couple days ago I
tried to uninstall one of my apps and stalled on an error "Windows Installer
Service cannot be accessed". After many trials and errors trying to fix this
issue, I stumbled upon a new fix for this issue that has worked in all these
situations where the Windows Installer Service will not manually start and in
essense, not allow install or uninstall tasks to complete.
Here's the easy steps:
1. Go to a Windows Vista (Any Version) computer that has the Windows
Installer service running correctly and run regedit(Start-Run-Regedit)
2. Go to the location
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\msiserver
3. Right click on this key and select "Export" and save the key to a Flash
Drive or other.
4. Run sfc /scannow on the damaged Vista computer - you won't need the
install disk as it goes to backup files on your HD. Do not reboot when
complete
5. Double click saved .reg file from working machine and import registry
settings into damaged Vista computer.
6. Now reboot and try to install/uninstall
If many of you have success with this method, please post this fix around
the WWW as I went through over 1000 links with users having the same problem
and not being able to solve it. Shame on Microsoft, very sloppy. It would
have been so nice if Microsoft released Windows Installer 4.0 as a standalone
installation with Vista's release so I could have repaired it, most users
have been doing fresh installs to fix this. Get your act together