So, a few weeks ago I installed the beta version of Windows Update on my laptop to check out the new features. No big deal. I downloaded a few of the updates, but didn’t really notice anything out of the ordinary.
Over the weekend, I was trying to install a few different pieces of software. No matter what I did, the installation was failing. After a bit of investigation I realized that I had installed Windows Installer v3.0 beta. Apparently this beta broke all of the install packages I was attempting to run.
With that in mind, I headed over to Add/Remove Programs… unfortunately, I found that the install package couldn’t uninstall correctly. So now I was stuck. Faced with the unpleasant prospect of rebuilding the laptop, and vowing to never install beta software again, I surveyed my options.
I took a stab and installed the Windows XP SP2 release candidate. So much for the vow. But, amazingly enough, it did fix the problem!