Stan sez:

"I'm assuming you can't boot at all, true, not true?"

Naw! It boots fine. The only evidence is the message quoted in my OP. Everything seems to work as
per normal. I began getting the message after first boot following (apparently) good load of new
DVD mapping software. I began to reboot when I discovered the program would not work.

Bob Swinney

wrote in message
...
On Mar 22, 1:46 pm, "Robert Swinney" wrote:
Upon boot-up the message, "Error - Program version is wrong. Please install again." This in my win
XP desktop. A casual search seems to say, somehow, that Windows Installer is missing. The
suggestion: StartRun register with "msiexec/unregister" and reregister with "msiexec/regserver".
Each/either leads to the message: "Windows cannot find msiexec/******. This began happening
following attempted upgrade to 2010 DVD of mapping software. Suggestions ??

Bob Swinney


A couple of things you can try before scraping off and rebuilding.
Hit F8 at bootup to get into the boot options menu. See if it'll come
up in Safe Mode. If it does, you can maybe find out what's attempting
to run that screws up the boot. There's some stuff online at MS's
site about troubleshooting boot problems, waaaay too long to repost
here.

Alternative, if the above doesn't work, roll back to a previous good
boot, F8 again and pick that choice. Means that any system changes
you've made since that time are GONE. One reason I run ERUNT
regularly to back up the registry.

XP can run a repair install, you'll have to boot up with a CD/DVD of
XP. Take the Install path and it'll scan your boot drive for valid
installations. Hit "R" to repair.

You can install a new version of XP onto the same drive, I always do
this for maintenance purposes anyway. Then you can play games with
the registry hives and/or boot files from the new install. I use
Registry Workshop to mess with things like what programs run at
startup and the like. It can load hives from other installs and can
do compares between different sets. Very handy in the right
circumstances.

Or you can just say screw it and reinstall after formatting.
Hopefully you have backups. Most folks would do that, "I've got
nothing on there I need to save", then find out that their phone
contacts and email lists are gone, along with all emails. Not to
mention music, videos and pics. I do image backups to another drive
for just such occasions. If the current one craps out, I can slap in
the backup, bootup, recover what new files there were and then maybe
recover the dud drive.

If what you have is a transient message and your machine boots fine
otherwise, please disregard all the above and check what you've got in
the Startup folder or in the registry for Startup programs. One of
them is giving out that message, you get to find out which one it is.
Again, there's a good writeup on the MS site for these problems.
Still no substitute for backups...

Stan