MSIEXEC 2.0/3.1 problem

[Aswan]

I'm having problems installing software that uses Microsoft Installer, it seems though as if my installer has been severily compromised. It is active in memory but behaves very unstable. When I try to install any software package that uses the Microsoft Installer I get the following message:

"This installation package could not be opened. Verify that the package exists and that you can access it, or contact the application vendor to verify that this is a valid Windows Installer package."

On the Microsoft site I found that the above error message has the following corresponding code attached to it:

[ERROR_INSTALL_PACKAGE_ OPEN_FAILED 1619]

I'm suspecting this error has come to be, due to some faulty registry fixer that I might have used. I'm not really XP savy, but I can take instructions, and this is what I've found so far.

Now I've tried some of the suggestions made on the Microsoft site like renaming the msi.dll and msiexec.exe and a third file to *.old and renew the installer but even after upgrading to 3.1 the problem persists.

Then I downloaded the Microsoft CleanUp file from the Microsoft site but when I try to execute it in order to remove the installer in it's totallity (so I can install a fresh instance of the installer) it gives me the following message:

[ERROR 1324. The folder path 'Program Files' contains an invalid character.]

I don't see any invalid character, does anyone else see it? I started cmd.exe and checked for the file name in DOS mode, but there was nothing wrong with it. It's named Progra~1 which is the normal shortcut for it, since DOS obviously has an 8 character limit (eventhough the cmd of windows allows it to show longer names).

There is however one peculiar thing, I can't seem to change the directory name 'Program Files'. The option is not there when I right-click on it with my mouse, but the option does appear when right-clicking on other folders. The directory 'Program Files' is read only, I untagged the option for 'read only', clicked 'apply' but the status returned to read only. So now the Microsoft CleanUp file is being prohibited by some function to access 'Program Files'.

So now I can't 'clean up' the Microsoft Installer, I removed all the registry keys in 'regedit' that allowed itself to be removed while some other Installer keys yielded an error message about the key(s) being in use by memory or something like that and that I could not delete it while it was engaged in any ongoing (or perhaps even an idle) process.

Does anyone have any suggestions that might help to to solve this irritating problem? On the Microsoft site they readily admit that is programming fault within XP and that this issue is known. Doesn't help me though does it. I've used XP since 2001 and this is the first time this type of problem has risen on any of my systems.

I'm currently using AMD64 3000+ 512MB RAM, 512KB L-Cache

I would appreciate any good suggestions, apart from "format/reïnstall windows" or make a partition etc etc. I'm aware of those options. Thanks for reading this.