(1) Certain programmes won't run, telling me I must have MSInstaller. When I run the MSInstaller setup it tells me it is already installed. I obviously first need to uninstall such vestiges of MSinstaller as remain. Where in the registry can I find it so I can slay the beast?

(2) Some of the threads have become so extended that they have become unintelligible. Can we campaign for some of these threads to be truncated and logicated??

here's a solution that works, plonkeroo.

Boot into PURE DOS mode, delete the MSI.DLL file from the \WINDOWS\SYSTEM\ folder (you can NOT delete the MSI.DLL file in Win98se because 98se will NOT let you), load Win98se and install/re-install Windows Installer 2.0.

remember, some MSI packages require MSI 2.0, NOT MSI 1.x

NOT!! As is typical even this advice from an MS KB article on how to refresh Windows Installer files is so wrong in that doing so will only renew the msi.dll file and there are a dozen or so other files still in need of refreshing.

I revisited this very issue just a couple of days ago and found a "new" switch for use with the msi installer. Only to find that it did not replace all files as was touted, I shouldn't be surprised with that result after so many similar results by now. Finding the switch for msi packages wasn't hard at all, I just installed the SDK kit for msi and went looking through the help files. HINT, it's not called a switch (sssh), it's a command line option (sssh). Anyway it's supposed to work like this, drop your InstMsiA.exe file into the root of your C:\ drive so we can find it to do the work on with and then copy/paste this into the Run Box as one long line:

Now that is set up to run as quietly as possible which then makes it not work - go figure. Remove the trailing /q and REBOOT=ReallySuppress to make it work but then there will be some dialog boxes and a reboot and it STILL DOESN'T WORK completely to renew all files. I could not get the msimain.sdb file to be replaced whether is was missing, mangled or fine. So...

The only way to renew ALL your Windows Installer files is to delete them all and then replace them. Put this into a batch file and run it from a Windows DOS box:

Reboot and reinstall InstMsiA.exe
Version 2 is the highest version that Windows98 can use, so programs calling for any higher versions of the Windows Installer were not meant for 98. Get Version 2 Windows Installer here.

very well said ShadeTreeLee, though it may be a long process the way you describe re-installing MSI

SpyBot is very good but when it found a thing called rmvalid.exe it had a difficulty in removing it. What I'd like to know is whether it's possible to automate the removal of known intruders?