Where has this been all my life? I can’t count the number of times I’ve needed to uninstall something that won’t allow a computer to boot normally, yet in Safe Mode I can’t uninstall it because the program uses the Windows Installer service which by default won’t run in Safe Mode. I finally got around to looking into it and now I can uninstall anything in Safe Mode to my heart’s content.

For those wishing to enable the Windows Installer service in Safe Mode, add the following registry keys and set their Default value to ‘Service’. The first key is for plain Safe Mode, the second key is for Safe Mode with Networking.

• HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SafeBoot\Minimal\MSIServer
• HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SafeBoot\Network\MSIServer

The screenshot below shows what this should look like in regedit.

• net start msiserver

You should now be able to run any installer or uninstaller that uses the Windows Installer service in Safe Mode.

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