Installer service fail to start

[bbone]

Windows 2000 SP 4 here. After some tweakings and problems (including removal od some spyware and stuff) my Installer service can't be started. Hence, for example, installing anything is not possible. And, for example, FF can't use the M$ java, so...

Anyone know, what to do, beside reinstall, to make it working again?

The C:\WINNT\system32\msiexec.exe /V file is here. The service is not disabled, it is on manual. However when in services I choose to start it, then in fail to and report that "service did not return any error", so it might be a Windows itself fault

****. Anyone having some ideas, what to test?

The path seems to be fine:

C:\WINNT\system32\msiexec.exe /V

[cluberti]

Try downloading and installing the MSI 3.1 v2 installer again, or run Dial-a-fix with the "Fix Windows Installer" boxes checked to try and fix it.

[bbone]

I got only 6 disabled services. I set them all back to manual yet no help. Prior to that, I tried unregistering and reregistering msiexec:

msiexec /unreg

msiexec /regserver

Sadly no help either. So I tried installing the updated installer ( http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en ), sadly no help either. Then I tried the unreg/reg trick again, just to be sure and it's still not helping...

So I fired up FileMon to watch what is going on when I try start the Installer service and the results are only 3 problems:

313 11:46:36 msiexec.exe:776 OPEN C:\WINNT\system32\msiexec.exe.Local NOT FOUND Options: Open Access: All

336 11:46:36 msiexec.exe:776 OPEN C:\WINNT\system32\Program\picture.exe PATH NOT FOUND Options: Open Access: All

363 11:46:36 msiexec.exe:776 QUERY SECURITY C:\WINNT\Installer INVALID DEVICE REQUEST

INVALID DEVICE REQUEST?!

I tried take a look at the Dial-a-fix utility and I must say it helped me with my other problem - my windows positions are NO remembered before. It found out that there was set some nasty limitations (probably by spyware), witch caused these settings are NOT remembered.

Well, not anymore. Dial-a-fix helped me greatly! http://wiki.djlizard.net/Dial-a-fix#Standard_version

Thanks a lot, cluberti !

Sadly it did not help me with the installer problem...

[cluberti]

Do you have a folder C:\Winnt\Installer?

[gosh]

And can you write to that folder (permissions)

-gosh

[bbone]

cluberti - Yes. I have the folder. There is even a subdirectory in it, the remainings of installed Diskeeper, a "{A320805E-26CE-4332-9239-2F4837165C8B}" dir with ARPPRODUCTICON.exe and DkIcon.exe files.

gosh - Yes, I tried that.

[cluberti]

363 11:46:36 msiexec.exe:776 QUERY SECURITY C:\WINNT\Installer INVALID DEVICE REQUEST

Looking at that more closely this time around, notice that this is a "Query Security" request - I'm wondering why that would fail, but that's definitely not a request to open the directory, but get security information about it. What are the security perms to that folder, by chance?