When Windows Vista starts a dialog box appears advising that SolutionCenter is being installed. Another message box then appears advising that “The feature you are trying to use is on a CD-ROM or other removable disk that is not available. Insert the SolutionCenter disk and click OK. Source: 1”. Unsure of what to do I have been clicking the close button (red X in the top right-hand corner of the message box) which closes the message and produces the following: “The installation package for the product SolutionCenter cannot be found. Try the installation again using a valid copy of the installation package SolutionCenter”. The computer is a Toshiba Satellite Pro.

Given the name of the package which the computer is trying to install (SolutionCenter) this sounds like a third-party application relating to a device which is connected to your computer. At first, I thought that it may refer to a Toshiba utility which is designed to assist with troubleshooting problems and provide help with the computer. However, doing a search of the internet did not yield any relation between a SolutionCenter application and Toshiba computers. Generally searching the internet for just “SolutionCenter” produced many more results, and it seems that other users have also experienced the same issue. In these cases, SolutionCenter is related to HP hardware (such as a scanner or printer) that may be connected to the computer. It seems that the HP Solution Center is used to allow greater control over HP devices, such as printers, than the Windows drivers provide. Next time the message appears, you should insert the CD which came with your HP device into the computer and in the “Source” box (which directs Windows toward the location of the SolutionCenter installer) click the “Browse” button and select the CD drive, which will tell Windows that it can install the SolutionCenter software from a CD currently inserted in the CD drive of the computer.

Be aware, if the window complains that the inserted CD does not have the necessary files for the SolutionCenter installation there could be two possible reasons for this notification. First, it is possible that the SolutionCenter installer is located within a sub-folder on the installation CD and you need to point Windows towards the specific folder containing the installation file. Therefore, it may be worthwhile browsing through the contents of the CD to locate the folder containing the SolutionCenter installation file. Open the CD within Windows Explorer. Before we go looking for the SolutionCenter installation file we are going to enable the display of file extensions, as the SolutionCenter installation file is generally called “SolutionCenter.msi” and we want to be able to see the “.msi” extension on the file. Go to the “Tools” menu > “Folder Options”. In the Folder Options window, click the “View” tab and enable “Show file extensions for known file types” then click OK. Now you can commence looking through the CD for the SolutionCenter installation file. Initially, it may be easiest to conduct a search on the CD for the “SolutionCenter.msi” file. However, if the search yields no results I would still look through the CD just in case the SolutionCenter installation file has a different name. Having found the folder containing the installation file(s) for SolutionCenter you then point the prompt that appears on starting Windows at that location and it should go ahead and install SolutionCenter. Once that has completed successfully it should no longer prompt you to install SolutionCenter on startup.

However, you may also find that SolutionCenter is not present on the CD. In this case it is likely that SolutionCenter will be found on another one of the CDs which came with your HP device. That said, you may also have found that you do not have any CDs with SolutionCenter. This could be the case because you have misplaced the CDs, or decided to throw them out after the initial installation of the device since you didn’t think that they were necessary. Either way, we need to obtain a new copy of SolutionCenter. Fortunately, if you visit the HP website (www.hp.com.au) then you should be able to download and install the latest drivers for your device, which should also include the latest version of SolutionCenter.

The previous procedures which we have discussed dealt with the situation where you would like to resolve the problem and install SolutionCenter. Should you not wish to install SolutionCenter, or all the other suggestions fail and do not resolve the problem, then we can stop SolutionCenter from attempting to install when Windows starts. Go to the “Start” menu > “Run” and type “msconfig” (without the quotes) and click OK. The System Configuration Utility window will appear. In this window select the “Startup” tab. This will list all of the programs and background processes which load on Windows startup. Included in this list should be an item which is causing the SolutionCenter installation to commence. Find this item (either the Startup Item or Command column should give you a clue as to the item which is causing SolutionCenter to install) and untick the entry for the item. This will disable that item from loading on startup. Click OK and then restart the computer. The SolutionCenter installation should no longer automatically run when Windows starts. A message may appear when your computer restarts informing you that it is running in Selective Startup mode. This simply means that you have selectively disabled some things from running on startup (i.e. the SolutionCenter install). You can safely tick the box to not display that message again and then dismiss the message.