Ironically enough, I downloaded Windows Live Essentials 2011 on my work PC to write another blog post about something (that I’ll hopefully get to later). I had a hell of a time installing WLE. I kept receiving an error from the installer. It said: Error 0x80070643. Source: wllogin-amd64.
I tried lots of different things to resolve this issue. The event log was showing that the installer couldn’t register a certain DLL file. Knowing this, I copied the needed file from my home PC and tried to manually register it. I should have known something was off when I didn’t get a message from the regsvr32.exe program when I registered the DLL. However, I continued on, installing, uninstalling, compatibility mode, disabling A/V, etc.
Finally, when I had just about given up, I browsed to my SysWow64 folder (I’m running Win7 x64), and looked for regsvr32.exe, the file the event log was complaining about. I had just assumed that the DLL file the installer was trying to register was not able to be located. I didn’t think about regsvr32.exe being missing. However, I was surprised to find that I didn’t have regsvr32.exe in my SysWow64 folder. Instead I had a regsvr32.exe.DEL file. I removed a virus from my PC a few weeks back. Perhaps that is what renamed that crucial Windows file.
I removed the .DEL extension, then removed all remnants of WLE (using Installer Cleanup Utility and manually deleting the WLE Program Files folder). I then re-installed WLE. It appeared to install all the way through this time, however, the event log showed information events (not errors) suggesting that the Windows Live ID Sign-In Assistant was having trouble installing (this was the component that the problematic DLL file is related to). When I launched Writer, the splash screen would display for a few seconds, then close, and the process would end. To fix this (once and for all), I then ran a repair install of WLE, which seems to have permanently resolved the issue.
TL;DR – Make sure the SysWow64 folder has regsvr32.exe, if you’re running Windows x64, or the System32 folder, if you’re running 32 bit.
EDIT: If you’re attempting to troubleshoot a WLE problem, it may be less time consuming to download and install the offline installer rather than using the web setup, as the program will attempt to download various components each time. The d/l is about 155MB. Located here: http://g.live.com/1rewlive4-all/en/wlsetup-all.exe