Windows 7 "The windows installer service could not be accessed"

Hi Guys,

There were a batch of updates done on my windows 7 machine this morning, I by mistake thought the updates had jammed (my machine often jams when I shut it down) so I held down power and rebooted.

I am now having serious issues when I seem to run MS Office & Adobe programs.

When I click them to open (via a file/taskbar/start menu) I get the following errror:

"The windows installer service could not be accessed. This can occur if the windows installer is not correctly installed. Contact your support personnel for assistance."

I first looked at system restore, but I only had 1 restore point and it was for the past hour which was past the time I performed the updates, if I try manually uninstall each update 1 by 1 I get the same error message above.

I have not found MS articles on remedies for this on Windows 7, but for XP etc MS do have a lot of information, I have followed these steps to try resolve - with no luck:

"Windows Installer Service could not be accessed" error message when installing application

BTW I have also tried to install windows installer 4.5 redistributable but its not compatible with win 7, I cannot find a download for windows installed 5.0 of which there is mention...

I am really not keen on doing a reformat, can anyone help me with ways to fix this issue?


Thanks,

Matt