Today, I had fun – I installed some software that installed a driver.  This is well-known software from a well-known vendor.

After installation was mostly complete, I got the frequent “You must restart to complete installation”, and so I did.

Well, suffice it to say from that point on, I couldn’t log in without BSOD.

So – roll-back to the restore point I took before installing?  Sounded like a plan.

A few minutes later, “Welcome…”, and BSOD. Back in Safe-mode, to find “Restore has failed, a file may be in use…”

So, OK, well, I *KNOW* my only problem is the last-installed program, so I can just uninstall in Safe-mode, right? Wrong.

Only a limited number of services are allowed to run in Safe mode, and the Windows Installer service isn’t one of them.  Attempting to do an uninstall gives an error that the service isn’t running, and starting the service just says it isn’t allowed in Safe Mode.

Quite why the installer service is disabled in Safe Mode, when I’d expect a *lot* of people want to use it to uninstall software is beyond me.

Thankfully, Google is (as ever) my friend, and a quick search revealed that the list of allowed services isn’t hard-coded, but there’s a set of registry keys for them.

So, one quick registry add later, and I’m finally able to uninstall the offending app.  And yes, my PC is running perfectly again

If anyone else is stuck on this, here’s the solution, courtesy of winvistaclub.

First, add the registry key:

REG ADD "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SafeBoot\Minimal\MSIServer"/VE/T REG_SZ /F/D"Service"

Next, start the service:

net start msiserver

If (like me) you’re running “Safe Mode with Networking”, just change the Minimal to Network when adding the registry key.

So – what you’ll see here over time will be posts about the software and/or hardware I use, anything I’m interested in, and any news items that pique my interest.

The About page should contain a fairly up-to-date list of my main hardware and software.

-Paul