After watching the Sounders 2-1 US Open Cup victory via the internet, I was asked: here to fix a bug or ...? Initial answer: I don't know, I'm just trying to figure out what's going on.

I casually asked what I hoped would be some orienting questions. Turns out there were no answers and that it wasn't different than before. A subtle reminder of the difference between "traditional" and open software development models.

I switched to lurking and listened to the banter that went around the room. Someone was picking up a drop into their product thus needed to root cause integration breaks. Someone else was orienting to the extension architecture underlying the core tool set to figure out an architecturally consistent place for a bug to be fixed. Another thread correlated an observed class of Windows behaviors with the various locations in the Windows technology stack the behaviors originated. I started to remember how this worked.

After lurking a while, fixing a bug seemed to be the place to restart. It had been much longer since checked in WiX code (~7 years?) than my last WiX night visit  (~5 years?). Time to knock off the rust.

On the way to submitting a fix SourceForge Bug 3297725, there was a lot of rust to knock-off. How does one enlist again? What developer tools do I need? How does build work again? How do those unit tests work? How does the SourceForge bug tracking work? How do code reviews work? Finally: oh yeah, that's right, this language (C#) is different than my day job language (PowerShell).

After my first fix was submitted, I started to look at a harder Source Forge bug (3304311) in dark. Test driven development would require much more effort here than the last bug. Doing the right fix wouldn't fit in this WiX night so I packed up and headed home.

WiX night dynamics remain fascinating. While a few parts were familiar, most parts were not. Familiar and humbling.

When I Bing-ed for delete windows.old, I found KB Article 930527: How to use the Disk Cleanup feature to delete the Windows.old folder after you install Windows Vista.

 Paraphrasing (and tailoring to my situation Windows.old on the c: drive)

1. Open a cmd window As Administrator
2. takeown /F c:\windows.old\* /R /A
3. cacls c:\windows.old\*.* /T /grant administrators:F (note had to delete, rmdir /q /s, my users directory by hand when cacls kept reporting "The system cannot find the path specified." on various files inside that directory)
4. rmdir /S /Q c:\windows.old\

And now I have 28 gigs back on my c: drive.

On final approach, Allen realized that they had forgotten to write a bootstrap program to read the tape into memory. Writing in 8080 machine language, Allen finished the program before the plane landed. Only when they loaded the program onto an Altair and saw a prompt asking for the system's memory size did Gates and Allen know that their interpreter worked on the Altair hardware. Later, they made a bet on who could write the bootstrap program first. Gates won.

All of these releases have the Windows Installer 4.5 features embedded in this Windows distribution.

Windows 7 is also expecting an RC soon though broad access is not yet available.

Unregister Windows Installer, and then reregister Windows Installer. To do this, follow these steps:
 
1. On the "Start" menu, click "Run:.
 
2. In the "Open" box, type "msiexec /unreg", and then press ENTER.
 
3. On the "Start" menu, click "Run".
 
4. In the "Open" box, type "msiexec /regserver", and then press ENTER.

This no longer works on Vista and above.  This is because the Windows OS install technology itself, called CBS aka Component-Based Servicing, has moved all service registration into it's own declarative format.  CBS also uses an underlying technology called service hardening to have it's Trusted Installer service own all of the OS resources. Using servicing hardening enabled Windows Vista to evolve Windows File Protection into Windows Resource Protection as it now protects both files and registry keys.

References to this troubleshooting step for earlier versions of Windows include

• Error message when you try to add or remove a program on a computer that is running Windows XP or Windows Server 2003: "The Windows Installer service could not be accessed"
• "The Windows Installer service could not be accessed" error message when you try to install Office
• How to resolve common "Windows Installer" problems
• Basic troubleshooting steps for Windows Installer
• How to manually remove and then reinstall .NET Framework 2.0
• "Windows Installer Service could not be accessed" error message when installing application
• You receive an error message when you try to install a program that uses the Windows Installer in Windows XP
• "Disk Error -- Reserved Error (-1601)" error message when you try to install an Office update
• "The Windows Installer Service Could Not Be Accessed" error message when you install a program in Windows XP
• You may receive Error 1721 when you try to remove programs by using Add or Remove Programs in Windows XP
• When you restart a computer that is running Windows Server 2003 or Windows 2000 Server, the computer stops responding, or the "Applying computer settings" screen appears for longer than you expect
• Windows Installer-related event IDs are logged in the Application log when you start an Office program
• Error message when you try to install the .NET Framework 1.1 Service Pack 1 Update from the Windows Update site on a Windows XP-based computer: "Updates were unable to be successfully installed"
• How to troubleshoot Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 installation issues on Microsoft Windows Server 2003

A good place to start is the What's New In Windows Installer 5.0 page.

Of the feedback I received for Windows Installer in Windows Vista, the Single Package Authoring worth a look.

Original credit for the workaround was attributed to https://chris123nt.com/2009/01/18/sqm-client-causing-crashing-in-windows-7/

• MIX09 - March 18 - 20, at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas: is all about the Web.
• Tech•Ed - May 11 - 15 in Los Angeles. Tech•Ed is all about shipped Microsoft Technologies. Most of the tracks are presented by Microsoft product teams and industry gurus. If this is for you, be sure to check out the pre-conference seminars as it already has a really good lineup.
• PDC, a.k.a. the Professional Developers Conference, November 17 - 20, 2009 in Los Angeles, is all about Microsoft unveils its future, and it's the one that resonates best with developers. Be sure to attend this one.