why does windows installer start up everytime i start up visual basic 6

Question

it starts up windows installer with random applications on my machine . . after i click cancel a few times, it loads vb6 fine.

any ideas why this is happening?

Answer 1

This is what a Windows Installer repair looks like. It means that something is broken in one of the installed products on your system. Ideally it's a one-off repair so you might be better off letting it runs its course and do the repair, except of course if it asks for a install CD that you don't have.

The Windows event log (Application) will have MsiInstaller entries saying what product and component has the problem.

Answer 2

To stop this behavior:

1. Start VB6
2. Open the Add-Ins dialog
3. Uncheck the "Visual Component Manager" Add-In

Source: After VS2010, SP1, VB6 launches VS2010 installer

Answer 3

It's possible a previous installation has not completed correctly.

Use the utility at the following link to remove any rogue installations files:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290301 (broken link Aug.2017, leaving URL for "historical purposes").

Answer 4

This worked for me, for VS2010 RC:

"Please wait while windows configures Microsoft Visual studio 2010 Ultimate."

THe work around that fixes the issue for me was to run the following via the admin cmd prompt.

Md "%ProgramFiles(x86)%\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\common7\IDE\FromGAC"

from http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-SG/vsprereleaseannouncements/thread/572a0f8a-16b0-4e1d-b581-16be36a9b564

Answer 5

This was also happned to me. Whenever i tried to open vb6, it started windows installer to configure "Autocad". Autocad had not broken. and it was working fine. I tried removing and reinstalling Windows Installer, But it did not solved the issue.

Then i installed Microsoft's "Windows Installer Clean Up Utility 2" from given link. Using this utility i removed the autocad from "Windows Installers" Database. After that VB6 never started installer again.

Keep in mind 'removing any entry from installer's database may be risky, but i had no choice. So do it on your own risk.

Download "Windows Installer Clean Up Utility 2" (this is a deprecated, unsupported and unsafe tool to use - Aug.2017. I will leave the link in for "historical purposes", don't use it).

Answer 6

As PhilDW has pointed out this is a Windows Installer Self-Repair issue, and can often be resolved by allowing the self-repair to complete once. At other times the problem persists and it should be fixed by other means. Even when the self-repair completes and the problem goes away, it can still resurface once you launch the conflicting application. Windows Installer is not easy to deal with.

In your particular case you might be able to get away with a "workaround" rather than a fix. By locating the main VB6 EXE file on disk (in its main installation directory) and manually creating a shortcut to it on your desktop, you might be able to successfully launch VB6 via this new shortcut without the self-repair kicking in. It might be worth a try.

This shortcut trick will not remove the underlying problem, but might help to "bypass it". Just for the record: the reason this might work is that the new, manually created shortcut is not "advertised" and will not trigger a key-path check of the installed product when launched. This is Windows Installer's way to verify that a product is correctly installed. Note that even if the workaround works, self-repair might still result during application use because of faulty COM data being detected (which is very likely the cause of the whole problem you are seeing, but give the manually created shortcut a try).

There is a rather comprehensive "article" on self-repair here: How can I determine what causes repeated Windows Installer self-repair? which might help to track down the cause of the self-repair kicking off in the first place, but fixing it can be a rather complicated process (so try the workaround first). It is a long article because there are so many different ways self-repair can occur. The common denominator is that different installers on your system are fighting over a shared setting that they keep updating with their own values on each application launch in an endless loop. The last application to launch will overwrite the registry or file system with its own setting.