Windows Installer Service - iTunes Fix

Hi everyone

Okay, I am running Vista Home Premium (64 bit). Recently I downloade
a lot of updates for Vista from the Microsoft website. Then a few day
ago I saw that iTunes had a new update. I tried to update the syste
but it would not work. So I thought "Hmm, must be trying to downloa
the 32 bit version of the software". I proceeded to download the 64 bi
installer directly to my hard drive. But when I tried to run th
program I got a message indicating that the Windows Installation Servic
was unavailable and to contact support personnel, or something equall
useless

In any event, I tried most of the suggestions on this site without an
luck. Just to save you some time, I'm not going to go into detai
regarding the exact method I tried. Just type in the descriptions belo
and I'm sure you will come across the threads. I tried the following
1. de-register / register using "run"
2. download a "good" registry key from a different computer that wa
also running Vista (32 and 64 bit) and paste it into my registry
3. download that useless "spam" program that is advertised i
association with this problem; an
4. copy and paste into a txt document the text of a registry entry an
save it as a .reg file

Needless to say none of these worked. However, during my travels
came across an interesting post relating to the installation of 64-bi
programs. Specifically, the person had noticed that 64-bit apps wer
not installing, and the error meesage involved the WOW64 registry entry

More specifically

"I tried everything from unregistering and then re-registering th
msiexec files in both the system32 folder and the sysWOW64 folder.
tried editing the registry and changing the windows installer imagepat
to the SysWOW64 folder. I tried running it with UAC on and then off an
from the true Administrator account, etc....nothing solved the issue

Finally, the other day I was searching the problem out and came upo
this blog

'Think# Knowledge Blog' (http://blog.thinksharp.nl/

I changed the key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\MSIServer\WOW6
from a 1 to a 0.

Well I tried the same thing, only I completely deleted the WOW6
registry entry. In any event, it worked and my 64 bit apps ar
installing exactly the way they should

I hope that helps someone and keeps them from wasting time on th
wholly useless Microsoft website

--
cerebus777