A friend of mine recently tried to install a program on his Windows computer and the computer gave a blue screen of death error. After restarting the computer, he tried to start another program and received the following message:
Unable to access the Windows Installer service. This can happen if Windows Installer is not installed correctly.
If you are getting this error on Windows, here are some things you can try to fix!
Method 1 – Make sure that Windows Installer service is started
Sometimes, if the installer service is disabled, you will receive this error. You can enable it by choosing Start, then Run and typing Services.msc. On newer versions of Windows, just click Start and start typing services.msc.
Then scroll down to Windows Installer and double-click it. Set the startup type manually, click Apply and click Start to start the service.
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You can also start the service by clicking Start, Run and typing net start MSIServer in the Run box.
Method 2 – Delete MSIEXEC without extension
Another strange thing that can happen is the creation of a second msiexec file in your C: Windows system32 directory. By default, there should be only one msiexec.exe file in this directory, but sometimes another file is created with no extension and 0 KB in size.
In this case, you should rename the additional msiexec file with the .OLD extension. After renaming, you can restart the Windows Installer service. Again, just go to Services, right-click Windows Installer and choose Restart.
Method 3 – Modify the remote procedure call service
Sometimes the problem can be caused by another service called RPC. Go to the Services section again as above (Start, Run, services.msc), right-click Remote Procedure Call (not the one that says RPC Locator) and select Properties “.
Now go to the Log On tab and under Log In As select Local System Account and select the Allow this service to interact with the desktop check box. Then restart your computer and see if the problem goes away.
If that doesn’t work, select the This account: radio button and click the Browse button. Find Network Service and click OK. The password for this account will be entered automatically, so do not change it.
Again, restart your computer and see if the problem goes away. Please note, if it disappears when you select the Local System account, just leave this value. Change it to NT Authority NetworkService only if the local system account is down.
Method 4 – reinstall Windows Installer service
If that doesn’t work, you can download the Windows Installer service and reinstall it! Some kind of irony yes !? Do this if you don’t even see the service listed in the Services applet, or if nothing works.
You can download the MSIServer package from WinHelpOnline Once downloaded, unzip it, right-click the .REG file and select Merge. Click Yes when asked to confirm. This basically adds the necessary registry keys for the installation service to work properly.
Method 5 – Install the latest version of Windows Installer
Finally, you can search Google for “Windows Installer” and download the latest version from Microsoft. This will ensure that you are not using an older version that could cause conflicts with other software, etc.
Hopefully one of these solutions will solve your problem! If you did it differently, write in the comments how to do it! Thanks!
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