You receive a "The Windows Installer service could not be accessed" error message when you run the Office 2000 Setup program (217521)


The information in this article applies to:

  • Microsoft Office 2000 Premium
  • Microsoft Office 2000 Professoinal
  • Microsoft Office 2000 Standard
  • Microsoft Office 2000 Small Business
  • Microsoft Office 2000 Developer
  • Microsoft Access 2000
  • Microsoft Excel 2000
  • Microsoft FrontPage 2000
  • Microsoft Outlook 2000
  • Microsoft PowerPoint 2000
  • Microsoft Word 2000
This article was previously published under Q217521

SYMPTOMS

When you run the Office Setup program, or in Control Panel click Add/Remove for Microsoft Office 2000, the following error message appears:
The Windows Installer service could not be accessed. Contact your support personnel to verify that the windows Installer service is properly registered.

CAUSE

This error will appear when both of the following are true:
  • You are logged into a Microsoft Windows Terminal Server from a Windows Terminal Server client as a non-administrator user. -and-

  • You try to run Setup for Office.

WORKAROUND

If you want to run setup for Office, follow these steps:
  1. Log in to the Windows Terminal Server console (not from a client) as a member of the Administrators group.
  2. Click Start, point to Settings, and click Control Panel.
  3. In Control Panel, double-click Add/Remove Programs.
  4. Double-click <Microsoft Office 2000 product> in the Add/Remove Programs list. where <Microsoft Office 2000 product> is the installed version of Office.
If you do not have administrative permissions on the computer running Windows Terminal Server, see your System Admininstrator.

MORE INFORMATION

When running the Windows Terminal Server Client you cannot run Windows Installer without administrative permissions. When you run the Office Setup or click Add/Remove Programs in Control Panel, the Windows Installer service will run. Administrative permissions are required because certain components of Office programs write to keys in the Windows registry.

For additional information about installing Office on Windows Terminal Server, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

217640Setup fails when installing Office 2000 on a Windows Terminal Server

Modification Type:MinorLast Reviewed:10/13/2006
Keywords:kbstartprogram kbtshoot kberrmsg kbprb kbsetup KB217521
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