Vista Update Crashing Issue

[Alkadual]

I came across a particularly annoying, and very hard to locate, problem with Vista and, since there are no sites that have a way to fix the problem available (and there possibly is no way to fix the problem), I thought I would post the solution here so that at least some other person can avoid the pure hell and fits of rage I went through in the process of fixing the problem. Seriously, I was tempted to smash the computer over my knee and buy an apple. I didn't because I have issues with them as well and PC is the lesser of the two evils in my opinion but that has nothing to do with this so I'll digress.

The problem: After installing an automatic update the windows installer program became corrupted. If a program was installed that used the windows installer (and not its own installer which many programs come with) it would freeze the computer. There were also some other issues, an annoying problem where my registry was edited for no reason and my DVD burner was no longer recognized by the computer but that was an issue that happened a lot of times after an update and easy enough to fix.

The annoying part: Windows Update likes to swamp your restore points as it installs updates so I couldn't restore to a point before the problem began. Seriously. I had 3 restore points 10 minutes apart at one time but that happened after I started fixing the problem. At first it was 5 restore points 1/2 - 1 day apart. So, not knowing which update was the problem I went online to try and find a fix for the problem. Ends up that everyone posted the same thing (in a lot of cases they copied and pasted their original post after someone said it didn't work). A simple reinstall of windows installer would have fixed the problem but Microsoft made it all but impossible in this version and higher of windows. Unless you duel boot and use the other operating system to manually delete the files your out of luck. And even then it might not let you reinstall it after you download the program from Vista (someone tried to duel boot and said it didn't install all of the files). So, I was left with the only option of reformatting and performing a system restore from nothing. Then, since the update was the problem and, not a bad download like I originally thought, I wound up with the same problem and no restore point to fix it and had to reformat yet again. And so I'm posting this in the hopes that someone else who has the same problem won't have to go through what I did.

The solution: Well if you don't want to do a system restore here is what caused the issue. I managed to find the exact update that caused the problem in the first place. I was installing updates one at a time and then testing windows install and managed to find it. It was caused by: Update for Microsoft Silverlight (KB982926). Thats right. A non-system programs update managed to completely mess up my system. So if you recently installed a Vista update and you find your installer is causing your computer to freeze then try uninstalling that update and any other silverlight updates you have installed and see if that fixes the problem before you resort to formatting and starting over.

[WhiteCrowUK]

I have so had it with Vista! I had something like this last year, and ended up having to rebuild the machine from scratch. To date I have had 3 Microsoft updates over 10 years which have totalled a PC.

Worse with Vista is it really can be very tempramental. I had hoped Microsoft would have solved the problems ... and they claim they have ... all you need to do is update to Windows 7! I think they've really screwed people over with Vista in a big way, and alas don't have the money for Windows 7 ...

[locksmyth]

If only there were an alternative to the software monopolies :P