KB2918614 breaks Windows Installer Service

Anonymous
2014-08-17T15:30:13+00:00

I didnt know where best to post a bug report about KB2918614.

This is for Windows 8.1 Pro

It appears on August 13 I received KB2918614 and immediately after I began having trouble with certain MSI installations, especially those that required any version of Visual C++ Redistributable to be installed.

Now, of course I have most of those already installed, but the install process of many programs runs those redistributables before the actual install runs.  It would always give me the error of "key not valid for use in specified state" and exit with a 1603 event.

I didnt know what caused the problem at the time and went through many troubleshooting steps including sfc/scannow, registry modifications (which have all been switched back to their original values), and attempts at re-installing the Windows Installer Service for Windows 8.1 (5.0) which apparently does not have its own redistributable install file.

Eventually I determined that I received a large number of updates on 8/13, so I removed them all.  This immediately fixed my problem.

As I didnt know if that was a fluke and I didnt know which specific update caused the problem, on reboot they all re-installed.

The problem returned as soon as I started back into windows.

I went through each of the knowledgebase articles and located KB2918614 as being the only one that modifies the MSI Windows installer service files.

I have now removed and hidden this update.

I wanted to notify Microsoft of this issue but did not know the best method to do so, so I am posting it in the Microsoft community in the event another user has the same problem as I did in order to work around it.

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Install and upgrade

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  1. Anonymous
    2014-09-07T05:24:51+00:00

    I am also quite frustrated by the effects of this "fix".

    I am running Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 and started getting the "key not valid for use in specific state" during any installation of a program using the Windows Installer service to install.

    I eventually found the information that this behavior was created by the KB2918614 patch, so I removed it.

    Now, when I try and install software that uses the Windows Installer service, the installation starts; asks for permission to install; then seems to hang for a couple of minutes. It then comes up with the error stating the installer stopped prematurely. Following that, it opens a window that says "The Windows Installer Service could not be accessed. This can occur if you are running Windows in safe mode, or if the Windows Installer is not correctly installed. Contact your support personnel for assistance."

    I have tried starting the Windows Installer service and it DOES start correctly (or at least it says it has), but that does not make any difference to the installation sequence. After the installation has failed with the error message shown above, a check of the Windows Installer service shows that it is no longer running.

    I have tried running "sfc /scannow" and it completes with the message that "Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files but was unable to fix some of them."

    It also says that "Details are included in the CBS.Log windir\Logs\CBS\log. For example C:\Windows\Logs\CBS\CBS.log"

    I found this file, but when I try and access it, I get an "Access is denied" message. (And, YES, I am an administrative user.)

    So, as it stands right now, this "fix" from Microsoft has done far more damage than good. Especially as I can no longer install programs that I require and which install on a laptop machine, also running Win 7 Ultimate, with no problems. Of course, the KB2918614 patch was never installed on the laptop!!

    ANY solution would be of help here. I thought about re-installing the Windows Installer service, but it appears that the version included with Windows 7 is not available as a separate install program, unlike all of the previous versions!!

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-09-05T21:09:50+00:00

    If and when I can replicate, I certainly will.  Doesn't replicate for us with unsigned MSI's.  However, the installing user is always privileged for us because the majority of our products are WCF services and the like.

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  3. Anonymous
    2014-09-05T21:01:33+00:00

    Can you get a log and post it to a onedirive public folder?

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  4. Anonymous
    2014-09-05T21:00:31+00:00

    Get a copy of the windowsupdate.log and a cbs.log and post it somewhere I can take a look if you want some help. make sure you get a failed attempt logged then get the logs right away so the good data doesn't get pushed back to one of the split logs

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  5. Anonymous
    2014-09-05T20:51:20+00:00

    We're doing some testing.  So far, the failure does not replicate for us with signed MSI's and/or Burn bootstrappers.  Testing the unsigned and then the Closed Environment cases next.  From what I have seen, install or upgrade is not possible if the error occurs.  The only remediation is to remove the update.

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