Windows Installer Stopped Working

[OrGoN3]

I've had this problem before, and Microsoft tech support told me to do a clean install. Since it happened twice within the same year, I'm trying to find the exact cause so I can either fix it, or at least prevent it from happening again. Before I start explaining the problem, yes my Windows installation is Genuine, and installed from the actual Windows XP CD.

I'm not sure exactly when, but sometime yesterday (or since before I restarted the computer), Windows Installer stopped working. When I attempted to install Rosetta Stone V3, the setup would just unexpectedly quit. Then when I attempted to uninstall the old nVIDIA PhysX software to replace it with the new one, I received a message saying Windows Installer cannot start, that I may be in safe mode and to restart. Ok, so I restarted. Service won't start and I get the lovely 1067 (event id). Now I'm also getting a 1015 (event id) after looking through my event viewer. I tried troubleshooting this again, going into safe mode, /regserver (/unreg before I reg obviously), the image path in my registry is correct (and has the /V flag), sfc /scannow yields no errors, etc etc. I had recently installed the latest version of uTorrent, so I uninstalled that: nothing changed. I uninstallg AVG Free just in case: nothing changed. I could've sworn I had system restore set to 1%, but apparently I had turned it off which doesn't help. Boot to last known good configuration didn't help either. I tried to reinstall windows installer 3.1, as 4 and 4.5 don't have a redistributable, but since I have SP3 (and all latest updates, except for office updates which couldn't install) it said SP3 was newer and it wouldn't install (so can't get a fresh copy on here).

Another odd thing is I removed QuickTime and iTunes, as they were damaging my system (virtually): if QuickTime loaded up, it would take nearly 5 minutes and everything I loaded up aftewards would take an eternity. I removed all instances of Apple and installed QT Alternative Lite. I noticed Bonjour was still on my computer, and in use, but the service was gone from services.msc. However, since the dll file is in use, I cannot force delete the file. Going into safe mode didn't help with the deletion.

I tried a reboot with diagnostic startup selected in msconfig, to see if another service was affecting it. I then rebooted as I normally would, but it didn't help.

Below is the output from the event log:

Event Type: Warning

Event Source: MsiInstaller

Event Category: None

Event ID: 1015

Date: 8/18/2008

Time: 5:15:46 PM

User: mycomputer\myuser

Computer: mycomputer

Description:

The description for Event ID ( 1015 ) in Source ( MsiInstaller ) cannot be found. The local computer may not have the necessary registry information or message DLL files to display messages from a remote computer. You may be able to use the /AUXSOURCE= flag to retrieve this description; see Help and Support for details. The following information is part of the event: 0x80080005, (NULL), (NULL), (NULL), (NULL), , .

One of the information entires that concerns me is:

Event Type: Information

Event Source: RichVideo

Event Category: None

Event ID: 0

Date: 8/18/2008

Time: 6:39:37 PM

User: N/A

Computer: mycomputer

Description:

The description for Event ID ( 0 ) in Source ( RichVideo ) cannot be found. The local computer may not have the necessary registry information or message DLL files to display messages from a remote computer. You may be able to use the /AUXSOURCE= flag to retrieve this description; see Help and Support for details. The following information is part of the event: Service started.

There is also this lovely warning:

Event Type: Warning

Event Source: Userenv

Event Category: None

Event ID: 1517

Date: 8/18/2008

Time: 5:42:03 PM

User: NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM

Computer: mycomputer

Description:

Windows saved user ZEDPM\Russ registry while an application or service was still using the registry during log off. The memory used by the user's registry has not been freed. The registry will be unloaded when it is no longer in use.

This is often caused by services running as a user account, try configuring the services to run in either the LocalService or NetworkService account.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

Any and all help is much appreciated. If this can be fixed without a clean install, or can find out what causes this, I'd be extremely grateful.

I will edit my signature to include my system sepcs.

Edited August 18, 2008 by OrGoN3

[OrGoN3]

Ok, so after following many guides to 'fix' similar issues, I believe I have pinpointed the problem to AppLocale. Others have had the exact same problem. Just one problem: I can't uninstall it. What would be the best way to remove it since Windows is currently using it? A simple forcedelete utility? Safemode? Or does it not matter?