re: Question about 'Windows Installer Appears Every Time I Start an Application' in WinXP with OfficeXP Friday, August 13, 2004 at 1:45 am Windows XP Annoyances Discussion Forum Posted by Phill Robinson-Welsh (1 messages posted) Vicky - I know it's 10 months since you posted this, but others may find this reply useful... Having opened Regedit and navigated to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Installer\Products you should see several registry 'keys' which will be long alphanumeric strings (about 32 characters in length), e.g. 017DB44EA17B3d11F9970006808AE88C Click on each of these in turn to see what application they relate to. The righthand side of the Registry editor will display the product name. When you find, in my case, MS Office XP Pro with Frontpage, you have the right key. Now, with the 32 character code highlighted, right mouse click and select 'Rename'. Add the word 'REMOVED' to the beginning of the string (not sure whether the word you use matters). That's it! It worked for me. No more 'Preparing to Install' messages every time I launch Excel (although one flashes up for a fraction of a second) - it launches fine, even from selecting an xls file in Windows Explorer. Word of advice: before editing the registry, I suggest you right mouse click the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Installer\Products node and select "Export". This will save the current registry settings for this node and its children to a .reg file. This will be useful if you need to restore the old registry settings. On Tuesday, October 21, 2003 at 4:40 pm, Vicky wrote: >Hello, I read the answer of this topic because I have the same problem but I don't >understand much about this. I cannot understand the instructions how to fix the problem. >Can someone explain it detailed and simple step by step please. I will be very thankful... > > Written in response to: re: Question about 'Windows Installer Appears Every Time I Start an Application' in WinXP with OfficeXP (Vicky: Tuesday, October 21, 2003 at 4:40 pm) Responses to this message: re: Question about 'Windows Installer Appears Every Time I Start an Application' in WinXP with OfficeXP (David: Saturday, January 15, 2005 at 7:09 pm) All messages in this thread [show all] Question about 'Windows Installer Appears Every Time I Start an Application' in WinXP with OfficeXP (Fady: Tue, Jan 21, 2003, 8:58 pm) re: Question about 'Windows Installer Appears Every Time I Start an Application' in WinXP with OfficeXP (Bob: Tue, Jan 21, 2003, 9:49 pm) re: Question about 'Windows Installer Appears Every Time I Start an Application' in WinXP with OfficeXP (Seni Williams: Mon, Apr 21, 2003, 8:56 am) re: Question about 'Windows Installer Appears Every Time I Start an Application' in WinXP with OfficeXP (Jay: Sat, Apr 2, 2005, 11:08 am) re: Question about 'Windows Installer Appears Every Time I Start an Application' in WinXP with OfficeXP (Falcon: Sat, Apr 2, 2005, 11:32 am) re: Question about 'Windows Installer Appears Every Time I Start an Application' in WinXP with OfficeXP (Giddel: Thu, Dec 22, 2005, 4:22 am) re: Question about 'Windows Installer Appears Every Time I Start an Application' in WinXP with OfficeXP (Daniel Erlenbusch: Tue, May 27, 2003, 5:04 pm) re: Question about 'Windows Installer Appears Every Time I Start an Application' in WinXP with OfficeXP (Eric: Fri, May 30, 2003, 2:06 am) re: Question about 'Windows Installer Appears Every Time I Start an Application' in WinXP with OfficeXP (braincandy: Mon, Jun 30, 2003, 6:18 pm) re: Question about 'Windows Installer Appears Every Time I Start an Application' in WinXP with OfficeXP (Vicky: Tue, Oct 21, 2003, 4:40 pm) re: Question about 'Windows Installer Appears Every Time I Start an Application' in WinXP with OfficeXP (Josh G: Thu, Oct 30, 2003, 6:36 am) re: Question about 'Windows Installer Appears Every Time I Start an Application' in WinXP with OfficeXP (John Burton: Wed, Mar 10, 2004, 3:00 pm) re: Question about 'Windows Installer Appears Every Time I Start an Application' in WinXP with OfficeXP (RichInAZ: Mon, Apr 19, 2004, 9:01 pm) re: Question about 'Windows Installer Appears Every Time I Start an Application' in WinXP with OfficeXP (Phill Robinson-Welsh: Fri, Aug 13, 2004, 1:45 am) re: Question about 'Windows Installer Appears Every Time I Start an Application' in WinXP with OfficeXP (David: Sat, Jan 15, 2005, 7:09 pm) re: Question about 'Windows Installer Appears Every Time I Start an Application' in WinXP with OfficeXP (Borpe: Sun, Jan 16, 2005, 3:07 am) re: Question about 'Windows Installer Appears Every Time I Start an Application' in WinXP with OfficeXP (Brian LaLonde: Thu, Aug 11, 2005, 1:03 pm) re: Question about 'Windows Installer Appears Every Time I Start an Application' in WinXP with OfficeXP (Steve Novosel: Tue, Nov 22, 2005, 7:11 am) re: Question about 'Windows Installer Appears Every Time I Start an Application' in WinXP with OfficeXP (Marion: Sat, Aug 26, 2006, 11:30 am) Reply or follow-up to this message Search this forum Start a new thread on a different subject Report abuse of the forum Return to the Windows XP Discussion Forum