Games For Windows Live Update Problem (Error: 80070643)

This "update" consists of an outdated version (v6.5) of Windows Live ID Sign-in Assistant and Games for Windows Live 3.5 which was released ages ago (nearly a year).

If you have the current release of Live Essentials installed you will have the latest version (v7) of the Sign-in Assistant and this update will fail, because it tries to replace it with an older version.

MSFT needs to seriously improve the QA for Games for Windows Live. The application itself is complete **** and this update clearly received no testing at all. The best bet is to hide the update in Windows Update until MSFT bothers to fix this.

I managed to fix it, but it's not pretty. Don't attempt this unless you are pretty competent.

1. Open regedit elevated, press Home to go to the top, press Ctrl-F, type in sign-in assistant, press enter
2. It should find a key that is a GUID (random looking letters and numbers). Expand that key and click on the key under it.
3. On the right, there is the name of an msi file. wl<something>.msi, Double-click that value and copy the value (the msi filename).
4. Open an elevated cmd prompt and type dir c:&lt;paste the name here> /s/a/b
5. Step 4 should find the msi file somewhere with .cache in the path. Copy the full path.
6. Type msiexec /X "<paste the full path>"
7. Allow the uninstall and reboot when prompted
8. Expect possible error messages from messenger etc when it reboots
9. Go to windows update and do the windows live update, it will work
10. Go to Programs and Features, find Windows Live Essentials, right click it and click Change/Uninstall. Do a repair. This will fix the errors on boot.

Good luck. It worked for me. No guarantees. Use at own risk and all that. =)

=== Verbose logging started: 3/13/2012  18:15:59  Build type: SHIP UNICODEfailed.

MSI (s) (F8:18) [18:16:02:514]: Windows Installer installed the product. Product Name: Windows Live ID Sign-in Assistant. Product Version: 6.500.3165.0. Product Language: 1033. Installation success or error status: 1603.

MSI (s) (F8:18) [18:16:02:515]: Deferring clean up of packages/files, if any exist

MSI (s) (F8:18) [18:16:02:515]: MainEngineThread is returning 1603

MSI (s) (F8:A8) [18:16:02:515]: No System Restore sequence number for this installation.

=== Logging stopped: 3/13/2012  18:16:02 ===

MSI (c) (AC:10) [18:16:02:521]: Creating MSIHANDLE (166) of type 790531 for thread 5136

MSI (c) (AC:10) [18:16:02:521]: Closing MSIHANDLE (166) of type 790531 for thread 5136

MSI (s) (F8:A8) [18:16:02:520]: User policy value 'DisableRollback' is 0

MSI (s) (F8:A8) [18:16:02:520]: Machine policy value 'DisableRollback' is 0

MSI (s) (F8:A8) [18:16:02:520]: Incrementing counter to disable shutdown. Counter after increment: 0

MSI (s) (F8:A8) [18:16:02:520]: Note: 1: 1402 2: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\Rollback\Scripts 3: 2

MSI (s) (F8:A8) [18:16:02:521]: Note: 1: 1402 2: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\Rollback\Scripts 3: 2

MSI (s) (F8:A8) [18:16:02:522]: Decrementing counter to disable shutdown. If counter >= 0, shutdown will be denied.  Counter after decrement: -1

MSI (s) (F8:A8) [18:16:02:522]: Restoring environment variables

MSI (c) (AC:10) [18:16:02:521]: Creating MSIHANDLE (167) of type 790531 for thread 5136

MSI (c) (AC:10) [18:16:02:521]: Closing MSIHANDLE (167) of type 790531 for thread 5136

MSI (c) (AC:64) [18:16:02:527]: Decrementing counter to disable shutdown. If counter >= 0, shutdown will be denied.  Counter after decrement: -1

MSI (c) (AC:64) [18:16:02:528]: MainEngineThread is returning 1603

=== Verbose logging stopped: 3/13/2012  18:16:02 ===

Same here guys. This is the same problem going on all over. Are you there Microsoft? please help!