I looked down at my Windows 7 taskbar today to find my virus scanner absent. In fact according to the shortcut and Add/Remove Programs Microsoft Security Essentials was gone.
So I poked around in the logs some, hoping against hope I didn’t have some weird backdoor thingy that had uninstalled it for me. According to the logs it was uninstalled as part of some Windows Update hijinks. Ironically I commented just this morning that I always advised people to stay right up to date rather than trying to micromanage that stuff.
Well something went wrong with the update and MSE could not be reinstalled. I got no notice of this from Windows Update scarily enough. Once I knew that it was Microsoft removing my virusscanner I felt much better. So I downloaded a new installer and fired it up. It failed (and failed and failed).
Eventually I did a Google search on the error code, “0x8004ff07”. It looks like this is something of a common problem, and other people have had it. What wasn’t real clear was how to fix it. Somewhere, and I apologize because I’ve lost the link so I can’t credit them, I read something about removing the uninstall registry key, “[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\Microsoft Security Essentials]”. Well though it doesn’t appear to work for everyone, that worked for me. After that I was able to reinstall MSE. Phew.
13 comments:
Your solution worked for me, but after I did what you said and tried to run the installer, I couldn't finished it again because of another error. This time, it was errno 0x80070643
I found the fix for that here:
http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/msestart/thread/85460032-9fcb-4743-be6b-e703c1ee6794
And here it goes for those who don't want to visit that link:
solution:
if you have the means, find another machine that will allow a successful installation of MSE
copy the Microsoft Security Essentials folder from Program Files and paste it onto the problematic machine
obtain the MSE setup exe file (mssefullinstall-x86fre-en-us-xp.exe) and uncompress this to another folder, if you have winrar or something similar you can right click this file and Extract to...(given folder name)
take all folder contents and copy & paste them into the C:\Program Files\Microsoft Security Essentials folder overwriting anything that it prompts about
run the Setup file within that folder and installation should be a success.
i stumbled on this solution after pretty much giving up hope and just a few failed attempts shy of a format...basically i was going to try and "force" an installation
after i moved the folder from a working machine onto my problematic machine i saw the Setup file and ran it, it errored out w/ a different error code and stated it was missing files so i decided to take my extracted files from the downloaded exe and move them into my C:\Program Files\Microsoft Security Essentials location and then ran the Setup once again for a successful install
Deleting the entire Registry entry listed above worked for me on a Vista Home laptop. Thanks
I'm running a Dell M1530 XPS laptop with Windows 7 64 bit. Your solution of removing the uninstall from the registry worked excellent for me too. Thank you very much.
thanks for the info!! you're a real life saver...I too feared that it was some backdoor exploit or something. luckily it WAS as simple as removing a few registry keys....
Wonder why Microsoft's website is not this helpful. Thanks buddy removing Reg key worked with me on Win7 32Bit.
thank you so much wow it worked for me as well i was getting really frustrated but your solution was a solution so thank you again your a life savor.
Deleting the uninstall reg key worked great. Thanks "Microsoft". Win7 64bit.
running windows xp SP3 32bit and deleting the registry worked
Cool! Glad this has been helpful!
Thanks for the help. I'm running Windows 7 64bit and it worked great!
Thanks, worked for me aswell!
The registry deletion trip worked for me.
It allowed me to (finally) reinstall my MSE.
Thank you!
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