When Windows Will Not Let You Uninstall or Reinstall a Program

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From the computer of: davak (390 recipes)
Created: Apr 30, 2004     Updated: Jul 17, 2004

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Office (and many other programs that use the Windows Installer Service) will often prevent reinstallation and uninstallation if there is a version conflict. This is how to correct this problem.

Programs that use Windows Installer Service are very picky about version conflicts.

Here is a common example. You install Office. It works well but something gets corrupted. You've lost your disc so you rebuild off the network or try to update online. Maybe you try to upgrade to the latest version. You get to a point that you can neither reinstall or uninstall and receive an error like one of the following:

This is a very common and painful problem that is caused by the Windows Installer Service. The best solution is to use Windows Install Clean Up to blitz the previous installation. After you "clean up" the previous install, you will be able to reinstall the program that is giving you the problem.

The Windows Install Clean Up program is powerful and can be dangerous. Read the support article noted below before running it on your system.

Read the support article and download the utility here.