Microsoft related programs do not load, but other programs do

I

invisigo

New Member
Does anyone have any advice for the following? I was running a scientific program (Matlab) that caused my computer to hang and required cutting the power. When I restarted I started getting all these problems.

Office 2007 no longer starts (Word was running when my computer hung). When I try to start Word, it starts the Microsoft Installer process. Then the Installer fails and says: "Error 1719: The Windows Installer Service could not be accessed. This can occur if the Windows Installer is not correctly installed. Contact your support personnel for assistance." I confirmed that the Windows Installer service is started under services.msc. Unregistering and reregistering the installer with msiexec.exe /unregister and msiexec.exe /register does not help.

Reinstalling Office 2007 from the original setup file gives the error: "This file does not have a program associated with it for performing the action. Create an association in the Set Associations control panel." This was for setup.exe, but other .exe files work fine.

Going to Control Panel -> Program and Features and clicking on "Change" for Word gives: "An error has occurred while trying to uninstall Microsoft Office. It may have already been uninstalled." However, this error does not apply just Office, it applies to EVERY program on the computer.

Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player won't load. Firefox and Google Chrome load, but downloading files and the "Save As" feature do not work. Cutting and pasting from web browser no longer works, although cut and paste works under Notepad.

Running "sfc /scannow" says I have a corrupted settings.ini file for the Windows SideBar, but this a known bug, according to the MS Knowledge Base.

MS Outlook 2007 loads, but I get the error saying that "NormalEmail.dotm" cannot be opened. When I close the program, I get the the error: "This feature requires MSXML 5.0 to be properly installed. Run Setup and Repair to restore this component."

Third-party programs appear to work fine (the ones that don't depend on MS components like gimp, matlab, putty, irfanview), but microsoft related programs fail.

I think there must be a corrupted registry entry or component file somewhere that is common source of all these problems, but I am having a hard time discovering where that might be and how to fix it.

Does anyone have any suggestions? :huh:

I am running Vista 64 Home Edition SP1 on a HP Pavilion dv6.
 

My Computer

System One

My Computer

System One

  • Manufacturer/Model
    Dell XPS420
    Memory
    6 gig
    Graphics card(s)
    ATI Radeon HD3650 256 MB
    Sound Card
    Intergrated 7.1 Channel Audio
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Dell SP2009W 20 inch Flat Panel w Webcam
    Hard Drives
    640 gb
    Cooling
    Fan
    Mouse
    Dell USB 4 button optical
    Keyboard
    Dell USB
    Other Info
    DSL provided by ATT
Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately, I don't have any restore points from before the problem. :( Otherwise, I definitely would have tried that.

Any other ideas?
 

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System One

invisigo said:
Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately, I don't have any restore points from before the problem. :( Otherwise, I definitely would have tried that.

Any other ideas?
Click to expand...

That is very unfortunate. I agree that I think it is registry damage. However, I think that it may be corruption or deletion of a particular key. I could not say which one, but I think that one of the big registry keys has been damaged, possibly even a REGISTRY SUB-HIVE. We can try to fix this, but I think that our chances of success are virtually zero. If an entire key of certain location has been deleted, we could not feasibly re-create it.

I is quite possible that that program crashed while accessing one of its own registry keys. This would probably be located in a SOFTWARE SUB-HIVE/KEY. If you were very unlucky, it could have deleted/corrupted this entire key, and basically wrecked every program on the computer, and that includes many Microsoft libraries that other programs rely on, so even if a program does not access the registry, it still may not work.

Those are my thoughts. I am sorry that I have had to write this.

Richard
 

My Computer

System One

  • Manufacturer/Model
    Dell XPS 420
    CPU
    Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 2.50GHz
    Motherboard
    Stock Dell 0TP406
    Memory
    4 gb (DDR2 800) 400MHz
    Graphics card(s)
    ATI Radeon HD 3870 (512 MBytes)
    Sound Card
    Onboard
    Monitor(s) Displays
    1 x Dell 2007FP and 1 x (old) Sonic flat screen
    Screen Resolution
    1600 x 1200 and 1280 x 1204
    Hard Drives
    1 x 640Gb (SATA 300) Western Digital: WDC WD6400AAKS-75A7B0 1 x 1Tb (SATA 600) Western Digital: Caviar Black, SATA 6GB/S, 64Mb cache, 8ms Western Digital: WDC WD1002FAEX-00Z3A0 ATA Device
    PSU
    Stock PSU - 375W
    Case
    Dell XPS 420
    Cooling
    Stock Fan
    Mouse
    Advent Optical ADE-WG01 (colour change light up)
    Keyboard
    Dell Bluetooth
    Internet Speed
    120 kb/s
    Other Info
    ASUS USB 3.0 5Gbps/SATA 6Gbps - PCI-Express Combo Controller Card (U3S6)
There is still one tiny, minuscule, minute chance that we can fix this. The crucial thing to do is to do the following IMMEDIATELY: Do not get your hopes up, and then:

Follow Option TWO, steps 1, 2 and 4 here: Hidden Files and Folders Also, while in Folder Options, uncheck "Hide Extensions for known file types"

You can change these back later.

Make a new folder on your Desktop called Registry Backup.

Open C:\Windows\System32\Config

Copy everything in that folder - EVERYTHING into the new folder on your Desktop.

Unfortunately, I think that our chances of success are next to 0. :(

Richard
 

My Computer

System One

  • Manufacturer/Model
    Dell XPS 420
    CPU
    Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 2.50GHz
    Motherboard
    Stock Dell 0TP406
    Memory
    4 gb (DDR2 800) 400MHz
    Graphics card(s)
    ATI Radeon HD 3870 (512 MBytes)
    Sound Card
    Onboard
    Monitor(s) Displays
    1 x Dell 2007FP and 1 x (old) Sonic flat screen
    Screen Resolution
    1600 x 1200 and 1280 x 1204
    Hard Drives
    1 x 640Gb (SATA 300) Western Digital: WDC WD6400AAKS-75A7B0 1 x 1Tb (SATA 600) Western Digital: Caviar Black, SATA 6GB/S, 64Mb cache, 8ms Western Digital: WDC WD1002FAEX-00Z3A0 ATA Device
    PSU
    Stock PSU - 375W
    Case
    Dell XPS 420
    Cooling
    Stock Fan
    Mouse
    Advent Optical ADE-WG01 (colour change light up)
    Keyboard
    Dell Bluetooth
    Internet Speed
    120 kb/s
    Other Info
    ASUS USB 3.0 5Gbps/SATA 6Gbps - PCI-Express Combo Controller Card (U3S6)
I'll answer only for this error:

"Error 1719: The Windows Installer Service could not be accessed. This can occur if the Windows Installer is not correctly installed. Contact your support personnel for assistance."
Click to expand...
This error is caused by any incorrect value in msiserv key -I attached here fix for this service,this will reset service settings to defaults http://www.vistax64.com/attachments/vista-general/15762d1253289420-installer-error-msiserver.zip

import below fix to registry +restart

If it doesn't work reiantall Windows Installer Download details: Windows Installer 4.5 Redistributable

This error isn't very serious although it may look and should be fixed.

BTW

Unregistering and reregistering the installer with msiexec.exe /unregister and msiexec.exe /register does not help
Click to expand...
These switchers don't work any more

Addressing to other errors it's really hard -neverless please uninstall completely all 3p security software and check results.If it fail too then everything is in @niemiro hands
-good luck!
 

My Computer

System One

Wow, great input! So you guys think that the problem lies in the registry? I can't think of anything else that would have been corrupted by a power cycle. System and program files shouldn't really have been changed, right?

So I did try merging your registry file, Flavius, but it didn't fix it, unfortunately. I then reinstalled the Windows Installer, but still got the same error. This suggests to me that the Installer is working fine and properly installed, but Vista doesn't know how to call the service, or something like that?

Other odd symptoms include:
1) Starting Visual Studio 2008 gives me "Invalid license data. Reinstall is required."
2) Music players and programs requiring audio do not work, but windows does play sounds when I go to the sound control panel.
3) The file browser does not work under firefox, although it works fine under notepad.

I do have the tools to watch registry access (Procmon.exe) and processes (ProxExp64.exe) and they give me hope that I can track down and pinpoint the exact entry where the error is.

The more I think about this, perhaps there is some core windows service that is configured incorrectly?

I'm downloading service pack 2 to see if that might be able to fix anything. Since downloads via browser don't work, I have to download to a remote server and then FTP the update over.

Input, niemiro? I did backup my registry files as you instructed. Cool. I had no idea those were there.
 

My Computer

System One

invisigo said:
So I did try merging your registry file, Flavius, but it didn't fix it, unfortunately. I then reinstalled the Windows Installer, but still got the same error. This suggests to me that the Installer is working fine and properly installed, but Vista doesn't know how to call the service, or something like that?
Click to expand...
Go to Start>>Search>>services.msc and set this service to AUTO and run it manually -strange but some people reported that this change also sometimes help in this case :confused:.
If it fail too :confused: then I'm sure you have other deepler untypical damages -It would be somewhere HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer or HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Svchost or in another place where I have no clue -maybe @niemiro will find something
 

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System One

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