My PC is messed up, can anyone please help?

[smoothy]

I am trying to install Adobe AIR and during an upgrade of Adobe AIR, the following error message appears: "An error occurred while installing Adobe AIR. Installation may not be allowed by your administrator. Please contact your administrator."

So I go to the adobe air support website at http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/403/kb403150.h ... in_vista_7" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

They say the following:

This error message may appear to users using Windows XP when a previous installation of Adobe AIR was not successfully removed. In order to resolve the issue, it is recommended that you use the "Windows Installer Clean-Up Utility" available from Microsoft. For additional information, please see the following knowledge base article from Microsoft:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290301" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

* Download can be found under Summary tab
* For more information about how to install, use, and troubleshoot Windows Installer Cleanup Utility, see the "Contents of the Readme.txt file" under the More Information tab.

Now I have never installed adobe air before and I am running windows XP + service pack 3. The only adobe software I have is acrobat distiller 7.0 and acrobat 7.0 professional.

I downloaded the windows installer cleanup utility but when I clicked on the exe on my desktop I get this error message:

"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 am not running safemode, also I am the administrator of the computer and have only 1 account.

I decided to run ccleaner and after fixing some issues in there, at the end of the last issue it fixed it shows this:

C:\DOCUME~1\SOLIDS~1\LOCALS~1\TEMP\AIR5E.tmp\Adobe AIR Installer.exe

Then it said manually remove registry values or something along those lines if I remember correctly

So how do I locate this file? I looked in regedit but do not quite know how to find this file

It's strange it exists as I have never been able to install AIR

Can anyone please help me, I really need to get this fixed

Many thanks in advance

[cybereality]

Maybe its just not meant to be.

[smoothy]

maybe I'm dreaming right now!

Maybe upon awakening my PC works fine

Now in reality my PC is pretty screwed up, I have kept this computer going for years. I really need to fix this problem

[WheatstoneHolmes]

Open search and search for "Adobe" (without quotes) in c:\documents

you should find Adobe AIR Installer.exe in there somewhere unless it was removed by the cleaner.

Try installing the Adobe AIR program with Admin rights. I haven't used XP for a while but on Vista you just right-click the program icon and choose "run as administrator"

If that doesn't work again try running the Microsoft Cleanup utility again but "run as administrator"

[smoothy]

Many thanks for your reply

When you say administrator mode, will you have to type in your administrator user name and password?

[WheatstoneHolmes]

On Vista I don't have to type anything in IF I'm using the admin user account, which I always do.

On XP it might ask for info, I don't remember.

[smoothy]

well thanks for your reply

But I have managed to mess my PC up even more, I think I am going to have to do a reinstall

[WheatstoneHolmes]

I know the feeling, XP has done that to me so many times I can't count them without borrowing other people's feet!

[smoothy]

OK, I have been doing a lot of trial and error on fixing this PC especially the fact that I have no sound, my sound icon has disappeared from the task tray

I checked out the sound and audio devices in control panel. I came across that my creative sb live value driver (WDM) is working properly which is what it says. But when I click on it it says pci slot 3 (pci bus 2, device 9, function 0) Why function 0? Could that be the problem that it may need to be saying function 1 instead of 0? I also noticed underneath I have the creative game port driver and that is saying pci slot 3 (pci bus 2, device 9, function 1) why does that have function 1, if that is the problem how can I swap them round? Or what am I supposed to do?

Any help much appreciated

Many thanks in advance