After installing updates on you Windows, you might find difficulty in running certain programs. All those programs that use Windows Installer to install are called Windows Installer based products. These products when updated may crash due to certain defect in Windows Installer and may not get updated at all. Basically the problem occurs when Windows Installer checks the registry key of the product. What is a registry key and what problem does Windows Installer face, are described in the following paragraph.
What Actually Happens
Windows Installer maintains a register of all the Windows Installer based programs running on your Windows, for every time it is updated, repaired or uninstalled. For every product, there is a registry key maintained by Windows Installer that contains information regarding that product. The key helps in identifying the state of a product. Possible states are registered, applied, superseded or obsolete. For a product to be in a working state, its keys should be synchronized. If they are not then repair, uninstall or update cannot be performed on the application. Patch Registration tools helps with this problem.
For each and every update that takes place, information regarding it is stored under two, lets just call them, directories. One is the AllPatches multi string value and the other is the Patches directory. It is necessary that both directories correspond with each other for a valid update to be registered. All keys that are in registered or applied state in the Patches directory should also be listed in the AllPatches multi string value. Hence with corresponding value missing in one directory with respect to the other, an update is not expected and Windows Installer is unable to work in maintenance mode. Patch Registration Tool helps by removing any registry keys under the Patches directory that does not have a corresponding AllPatches value. The software automatically rolls back to its previous version, thus enabling the user to update the software over gain.
Of course there might be other issues interrupting or disrupting an update, but Patch Registration Tool helps with this little problem only. You can download it from Microsoft’s own website. For your convince just copy past this link into your address bar:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=0a162694-4d9d-4676-8283-1ba674374d71&displaylang=en
This link will take you to the download page. Download files for different system configuration are available. Choose the one that’s most appropriate. The x86 version is for a 32 – bit Windows XP and x64 is for 64 – bit.
Tips
Set your automatic updates to “Notify me but don’t automatically download or install them.” Always check the updates available, if you really need them or not, before downloading. Downloading and installing all updates available may not be necessary. In fact it might be possible that an update may corrupt an existing software. Sometimes incomplete versions of softwares are released, just for the sake of testing. So before updating a software do check the official website for release notes. Keeping your computer up to date is good as long as it is not effecting the existing system.
