Microsoft's Windows Installer Cleanup Utility no longer available

The Windows Installer CleanUp Utility (MSICUU) was a last resort to work around problems with broken or partially installed Windows Installer (MSI) packages if the regular measures like uninstalling from Add/Remove Programs control panel have failed. Officially it was available to fix broken installations of Microsoft Office but could be used for any msi based install.

Unfortunately many web sites recommended the tool as a simple way to fix any msi problems, and some users damaged their operating environment by misusing the Windows Installer CleanUp Utility.

As reported by The Windows Club two days ago, Microsoft has removed the MSICUU download from their web site. Knowledge base article 290301 has been updated with the following notice:

This article previously contained a link to the Windows Installer Cleanup utility (MSICUU2.exe). If you were directed to this article to solve a problem installing a product other than Microsoft Office, please contact your software manufacturer for installation support on the product.

While the Windows Installer Cleanup utility resolved some installation problems, it sometimes damaged other components installed on the computer. Because of this, the tool has been removed from the Microsoft Download Center. The Fix it Solutions in this article provide the ability to fully remove Office 2003, 2007 and 2010 suites without damaging other Windows components.

Instead of the Windows Installer CleanUp Utility the knowledge base article now includes "Fix It" tools in the form of msi packages to safely remove broken installations of Office 2003, 2007 and 2010. Since the Fix It tools are packaged as msi files, this won't help in situations where you can't run any msi setup.

MSICUU could also be used to clean the Windows Installer cache from msi files that were no longer needed because the software had already been uninstalled. This could be useful in low disk space situations. I don't know if the mentioned problems also apply to this use of the tool.

Bookmark and Share 

Published Mon, Jun 28 2010 12:38 by stefan
Filed under: , , , ,

Comments

# re: Microsoft's Windows Installer Cleanup Utility no longer available

So what about this?  support.microsoft.com/.../968749

This tool is used to cleanup SQL Server problems too.  How do we install those now?!!

Tuesday, June 29, 2010 11:10 AM by Greg

# re: Microsoft's Windows Installer Cleanup Utility no longer available

Some people pointed out that the MSICUU is still available for download from some third party web sites. Thanks for sending me this information, but I won't post links to such sites for a number of reasons:

  • Sometimes web sites get hacked of infected, and some web sites intentionally distribute malware. So you can't be sure you get the real MSICUU. And even if the file is okay today, it might get infected tomorrow.
  • As far as I know, the MSICUU is not generally redistributable. This means that each site hosting a copy of the tool would need to have a special agreement with Microsoft. I want to avoid linking to illegal downloads.
  • Microsoft pulled the MSICUU for a reason. While the article doesn't go into great detail about the problems caused by MSICUU, obviously they were important enough to remove the tool.

Monday, July 05, 2010 2:15 AM by stefan

# Program Install and Uninstall Troubleshooter (with screenshots)

Microsoft has published a new tool to help end users fix setup related issues such as programs that can't

Friday, November 25, 2011 10:52 AM by InstallSite Blog