An interesting applications install problem

Good day all, this is the Angry Systems Administrator. Recently I had a problem installing an upgrade to the Blithering Idiot’s Angry Webmaster’s development system. It took a couple of days for me to find out what was causing the issue since it was very sporadic.

It turns out there was a permissions issue with one of the folders in the Windows directory. I’m still not sure how this happened, but some of the required permissions were missing. Finding out this was the problem took a little doing. I ended up Googling the error codes I was seeing and going through the various links until I found one that made sense. In this case I found the answer at answers.microsoft.com. (Where else?)

One of the posters came up with several solutions.

Method 1

Unregister Windows Installer, and then reregister Windows Installer. To do this, follow these steps:

On the “Start” menu, click “Run.

In the “Open” box, type “msiexec /unreg”, and then press ENTER.

On the “Start” menu, click “Run”.

In the “Open” box, type “msiexec /regserver”, and then press ENTER.

Now I didn’t use this method. I used the following method to correct the error.

Method 2

Check permissions within the Installer folder. To do this, follow these steps.

Click on Start and in the Start Search bar > type in > c: /windows/installer.

Right click on c: /windows/installer at the top under programs and click properties.

Click on the security tab > Verify if System and Administrator account has Full access permissions.

The Everyone account should have read and execute permissions, List Folder Contents, and Read.

Now, when I did this and reset the permissions as specified I was able to install the upgrades I needed on Stupid Moron’s The Angry Webmaster’s system.

So, what might have caused this issue? One possibility is a virus, however both the Webmaster and myself tend to be very careful about that. While researching the problem I did see another forum listing the same issues with Skype upgrades. The Webmaster does use Skype, (Primarily Mrs. Webmaster uses it), and I’m wondering if the recent update might have broken something.

Now, one issue I did have was not being able to find the Windows Installer folder. As most people will do, they first thing I did was use Windows Explorer to dig through the Windows directory. Apparently I wasn’t the only one seeing a problem with this. I ended up using a third party file manager, (In this case ExplorerXP), and I was able to find and reset the permissions with this tool. I also verified that Free Commander would also see it. Both applications are free and Free Commander is available at Portableapps.com.

Oh well, all that matters is the issue has been corrected. Hopefully, if you have run into the same problem, this will help you out as well.

Thank you

~The Angry Systems Administrator~