I have installed Registry Mechanic 8.0 and Roxio Media Creator 9 on my computer. Both programs worked fine for quite a while, but recently whenever opening Registry Mechanic the installer for Roxio My DVD DE starts. This can be cancelled and Registry Mechanic continues to open and appears to function normally. However, this is interrupting the starting process for Registry Mechanic and is quite frustrating. Reinstalling Registry Mechanic does not solve the issue. How can I stop this from occurring? The computer is running Windows Vista Home Premium.

This is quite an interesting problem and one which many other users also experience. However, it is not just limited to Registry Mechanic and Roxio Media Creator. Other people have reported that when opening a selection of other applications, the installation for other programs starts. This is related to the Windows Installer program which is used to provide installation services for many Windows-based programs. It seems that occasionally when you start a program the Windows Installer service believes that a required component of the program is not installed and then launches the Windows Installer to finish the installation. This could happen regardless of whether the component is installed or not, making the entire process a bit flaky as to whether it actually needs to install something or whether it simply claims that something must be installed. That said, it is quite interesting that an installer for a completely different program is launching when you start Registry Mechanic and I cannot easily explain why this occurs without looking at your particular setup. However, there are some generic procedures we can attempt to resolve this problem.

First, you should try letting the Roxio installer run its course. When it appears in response to starting Registry Mechanic let the installation run. You may be prompted to continue to install particular components. If so, agree (so long as you don’t think this will cause problems for your computer) and jump through the hoops until the installation has concluded. Once this occurs, restart the computer and then check whether the problem continues. If not, it seems that the installer is now satisfied that it has completed and should not prompt you again when starting Registry Mechanic.

However, if you find that letting the installation run its course does not work, or perhaps the installation process produces an error and does not allow you to continue, the next step will be uninstalling both Registry Mechanic and Roxio and then doing a reinstallation, in a particular order with specific options enabled during the installation. To begin, uninstall both Registry Mechanic and Roxio. Once this has been done, reinstall Roxio. During the installation procedure you may be presented with the option to customise the components to install. Make sure that you select to install all options available – do not leave any options as install later or install when required (as this could have been causing the Windows Installer to launch, as it was trying to install a missing component of the software). Once the installation has completed, restart the computer. After the restart has completed, check that Roxio opens correctly without any errors or other unusual happenings.

Once you are satisfied that Roxio is opening and functioning correctly you should next try reinstalling Registry Mechanic. Again, during the installation process make sure that you install all components of the software and do not leave anything deselected to install later. After the installation has completed, restart the computer. Now, for the moment of truth, once the computer has restarted check whether you are able to open Registry Mechanic without the Roxio installer launching. If this works without problem then it seems that a component of the software was not installed previously causing the error to appear.

If the problem continues then something else appears to be awry with the software causing the installers to consistently appear. We should next try running the Windows System File Checker (SFC) utility. This will check for any missing or corrupt Windows system files and replace these with known good copies. The reason that this may be useful is because the installation of one of the pieces of software could have caused a Windows system file to become corrupt thus triggering the Windows Installer. To run the System File Checker, go to the “Start” menu > “Run” and type “sfc /scannow” (without the quotes, and make sure that you include the space between “sfc” and “/scannow”) then press OK. The SFC utility will immediately commence operations. Once it has finished the utility will exit silently with no user feedback. At this point you can restart the computer and then check whether the problem continues.

Should the problem still continue, it could be due to incomplete installation information perhaps due to some kind of unanticipated problem that occurred during the software installation, or maybe even a bug in the software installers. In either case, there may be incomplete installation information on your computer which is causing Windows Installer to trigger. In order to check and remove any such information you can try downloading and running the Windows Installer CleanUp utility (support.microsoft.com/kb/290301). Once again, uninstall both programs from your computer. Then, download and install the Windows Installer CleanUp program from the Microsoft Knowledge Base article previously cited. Once installed, run the “Windows Install CleanUp” utility which is located in the Start menu. Upon opening you will be presented with a list of programs that are (or have previously been) installed on the computer. Check whether there are any entries for Registry Mechanic or Roxio Media Creator in the list. If these programs are present this is an indication that, despite having uninstalled these programs from the computer, remnants are still present. In this case, we can use the Windows Installer CleanUp utility to remove these trace elements before attempting a clean reinstallation of the software. Select the programs from the list and click the “Remove” button. This will proceed to remove the remaining elements of the software from your computer.

After the removal process is complete, reinstall the Registry Mechanic and Roxio software on your computer to check whether the problem continues. If there is still a problem, I cannot suggest any other generic methods for resolving the issue as these have been exhausted at this point. You could take the drastic measure of attempting a full reinstallation of Windows, but this is quite a bit of overkill. That said, if this problem is being caused by something completely wrong with the Windows Installer program a reinstallation of Windows should fix the issue. However, the decision as to whether the inconvenience of reinstallation is greater than the inconvenience of the current problem is something you must decide.