Windows Installer Service Issues After Interrupted Visual Studio Installation

Question

Windows Installer Service Issues After Interrupted Visual Studio Installation

Guillermo Diaz 5

After a failed installation attempt of Visual Studio Community, which was canceled abruptly, the Windows Installer Service seems to be malfunctioning. A support ticket was submitted on the Visual Studio Dev Community, where different solutions were attempted without success: Windows Installer Service is Unavailable.

Currently, the installer service appears to be stuck in the background, causing issues such as preventing system shutdowns with error messages about ongoing installations. This problem persists even after multiple restarts and Windows updates. Although other aspects of the OS function normally, installation attempts for new programs are hindered by the ongoing installer process, leading to errors like "the installation cannot be done until other installation finishes."

A workaround has been to manually terminate the Windows Installer service in Task Manager prior to installation attempts. However, this method recently failed when trying to install Node.js.

I'd be open to share logs or more necessary insight but I don't know how this forum works yet. I'd been looking for a windows support service that allows me to talk privately with someone so that I know I'm not sharing critical system information publicly (also I don't know exactly what is stored in these system logs, maybe it's just fine to share, please lmk)

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Answer 1

Zunhui Han 4,295 Microsoft External Staff

Hello,

Thank you for posting in Q&A forum.

Based on the information you provided, I suspect the following reasons may cause this problem:

Corruption in Windows Installer Service registry
Pending/Incomplete installtion or uninstallation
Missing MSI binaries

I suggest you try the following steps to see if this problem can be solved:

1.Delete any entries found under below registry and reboot:

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\PendingFileRenameOperations HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\InProgress

2.Run the below MSI fixit and clean up pending/incomplete installation or uninstallation:

http://internal.evergreen.microsoft.com/mats/Program_Install_and_Uninstall

3.Backup the below MSIserver service registry, replace it from a working machine and reboot

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\msiserver

Note If you modify the registry incorrectly, you can cause serious problems. Therefore, follow these steps carefully. For additional protection, back up the registry before you modify it. For more information about how to back up and restore the registry, see How to back up and restore the registry in Windows.

I hope the information above is helpful.

Best regards

Zunhui

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Guillermo Diaz 5 Reputation points

2025-03-18T13:58:56.1233333+00:00

Please excuse my ignorance, I'm quite unfamiliar with this kind of troubleshooting:

First of all, are these concatenated steps or rather 3 different possible solutions (i.e. check 1st --> check 2nd --> check 3rd)?

Also let me understand, the first step means that I open the registry editor, navigate to the folders "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System...\Session Manager" and "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software...\Installer" and within those folders find the values "PendingFileRenameOperations" and "InProgress" and delete them? If that's the case, I can see the first one but not the second one. I'm not sure what do you mean by "any entries"

Finally, I don't quite understand the 3rd step, how am I suposed to do such thing?
Zunhui Han 4,295 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff

2025-03-19T01:31:39.4266667+00:00

Hi,

Thank you for your reply. These are three possible solutions. I suggest you try them one by one until the problem is fixed. If you can only see the second registry entry, just delete it. For the third point, you need to export the registry entry on a normal machine and then copy and install it on the machine that currently has the problem.

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