Ok, so M$ are a very big target and it’s easy to write M£ instead of the full brand name. But since a recent ‘automatic upgrade’ I’ve had a repeated problem with windows installer trying to install software everytime I open an email.

It would also be easy at this point to write lots of explitives in capital letters, which is what I feel like doing.

I have searched the internet for two days now trying to ‘fix’ this (although haven’t the money grabbing dimwits at M$ heard the famous cheesy dictum - ‘if it ain’t broke…’). They think they’re so smart because they tell you to download something from their website. Which what I have done ain’t I? That still hasn’t fixed it. Neither has running all sorts of anti-virus software, adware, hijackthis! and so on.

I find Alta Vista better than Google for technical searches. Where I found a ‘blog’ which leads to this

http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/community/centers/management/msi_faq.mspx

Scroll down this page dear reader and discover this REALLY NOT HELPFUL advice:

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Q. Every time I launch my application, Windows Installer performs an installation. How can I determine the cause of the on-demand installation?

A.

An easy way to determine the cause of an on-demand installation is to look in the application event log for MsiInstaller log messages of the form:

Event Type: Warning
Event Source: MsiInstaller
Event ID: 1001
Description:
Detection of product ‘{000C1109-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}’, feature ‘Example’ failed during request for component ‘{00030829-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}’
Event Type: Warning
Event Source: MsiInstaller
Event ID: 1004
Description:
Detection of product ‘{000C1109-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}’, feature ‘Example’, component ‘{00030829-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}’ failed. The resource ‘C:\Progam Files\example\example.exe’ does not exist.

The first message (with event ID 1001) states which component was being installed. The component listed here is the component named in the Component_ column of the Shortcut table for the particular shortcut.

The second message (with event ID 1004) indicates which component failed detection. Improved event logging in Windows Installer 2.0 has updated the message so that in most cases, the message identifies the actual resource that resulted in the failed detection. The component with the missing or damaged keypath is the component that is triggering the reinstallation.

In the example above, the reinstallation is triggered because the resource ‘c:\Program Files\example\example.exe’ does not exist. You would then need to find out why the keypath does not exist—in this case, the user deleted it.

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I don’t want to be rude, but I will be. They should print this out, roll it up and ..well, whatever. I hate them; I really hate them. I