This article explained by MiniTool official web page mainly provides eleven solutions to solve the “error opening installation log file” problem in Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows 8, as well as Windows 7 operating systems. Read and find one that suits you!
You may encounter a problem saying that “Error opening installation log file. Verify that the specified location exists and is writable” when you try to uninstall an application from Windows Control Panel. That message is displayed within a Windows Installer window.
Why Does the Error Appear?
When the Windows Installer logging is enabled and its engine cannot write the uninstallation log file properly, you will be prompted with the above error message. Such a situation is caused if the Windows Installer’s app heap becomes freed and loses the information on where to save the log file.
In this case, Windows Installer tries to write the location C:\Windows\System32 and addresses it as a file. The right behavior would be writing to this location and file name: C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Temp\MSIxxxxxx.log.
How to Fix “Error Opening Installation Log File”?
To deal with the “error opening installation log file windows 10/11” problem, you can try the following methods.
#1 Restart Explorer.exe
To handle the above issue, you can simply reopen your Windows Explorer program within Task Manager.
- Open Windows Task Manager.
- In the default first Processes tab, find Windows Explorer under the Apps section.
- Click on Windows Explorer to activate it and click on the Restart button in the bottom right corner.
#2 Directly Run the Uninstaller of Target App
Secondly, you can choose to directly run the uninstaller file of the software that you’d like to uninstall. Just go to the installation file of the target program and find its uninstaller. Usually, the file is named “uninstall”, “uninsxxx”, or something similar. Next, double-click on the file to trigger the uninstallation process. Then, just follow the on-screen instruction to complete the task.
If you can’t determine the uninstaller file of the target tool, move to the next solution.
#3 Uninstall App from Windows Settings
Thirdly, you can switch to Windows Settings utility to try to uninstall the desired program. For Windows 11, just refer to the below steps.
- Navigate to Start > Settings > App > Apps & features.
- Scroll down to find the target app.
- Click on the More (three dots) option and select Uninstall.
- Then, follow the guide to finish.
#4 Manually Remove the Log File
If you still suffering from the “error opening installation log file. Verify that the specified location exists and is writable” problem, you are recommended to manually delete the INSTALL log file from the app’s directory. It is possible that there is already a log file with the proper filename and Windows Installer can’t replace it. So, you receive that warning message.
If this is true for you, you can solve this problem by manually removing the log file. Just go to the installation folder of the target software and search for “install.txt”. Once find it, delete it or move it somewhere else.
#5 Start Windows Installer Service
There is also a chance that your Windows Installer service hasn’t been started. If so, you need to start it.
- Open Windows Services app.
- Scroll down the right list and find Windows Installer.
- Right-click on Windows Installer and select Properties.
- In its properties window, click Start > OK to launch the Windows Installer service.
#6 Reregister or Reinstall Windows Installer
Besides, you can try to re-register the Windows Installer program to fix the issue.
Before starting, you need to locate the location of the msiexec.exe file on your PC. Just input %windir%\system32 in the address bar of your file explorer and press Enter. Or, directly go to C:\Windows\System32. Then, you can find the msiexec.exe file in the System32 folder. Therefore, the address of the msiexec.exe file is C:\Windows\System32\msiexec.exe.
Next, let’s reregister Windows Installer according to this guidance.
1. Open Windows Registry Editor.
2. Move to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\msiserver.
3. In the right section, double-click the ImagePath file to edit its value.
4. In the popup, set its value as the location of the above msiexec.exe file and ended with /V. In the example, it is C:\Windows\System32\msiexec.exe /V or %windir%\system32\msiexec.exe /V.
5. Click OK to save the changes and close Registry Editor.
6. Restart your computer into safe mode.
7. Open the Run box.
8. If you are running a 64-bit system, input %windir%\Syswow64\Msiexec /regserverin the Run dialog and press Enter. Otherwise, type msiexec /regserver in the Run box and click OK.
9. Finally, restart your machine to normal mode.
#7 Reinstall Windows Installer
Or, you need to reinstall the Windows Installer app. First of all, run the following commands one by one in the command prompt (CMD).
- cd %windir%\system32
- attrib -r -s -h dllcache
- ren msi.dll msi.old
- ren msiexec.exe msiexec.old
- ren msihnd.dll msihnd.old
- exit
Then, restart your PC, download and install the newest version of the Windows Installer. After installation, you may need to reboot your computer again.
#8 Check and Fix Corrupted Files
Moreover, you can run the System File Checker (SFC) to scan your computer for damaged or missing files. Once detected, it will automatically fix the issue by repairing the corrupted files or re-adding the missing items.
To achieve that, just open a CMD as Administrator, type sfc /scannow, and press Enter key to start the procedure. Then, no further action is needed. It will show you the result after a while.
#9 Fix TMP and TEMP Directories
You might come across the “error opening installation log file windows installer” problem when the “TMP” and “TEMP” directories are different. That will result in Windows Installer writting to TMP while it will try to read from TEMP.
To deal with this situation, you can refer to the values of both directories in the same direction to eliminate the conflict.
- Launch an elevated CMD.
- Input set TEMP+%tmp% and press Enter.
- Then, try to uninstall the target software to see whether the error occurs or not.
#10 Diagnose Windows Memory
What’s more, you can run the Windows Memory Diagnostic app to handle the problem.
- Run mdsched in Windows Run to open Windows Memory Diagnostic.
- Choose the default recommended option – Restart now and check for problems.
- OS will reboot and begin to check for memory problems.
- When it finishes, the machine will restart automatically and tell you the result.
#11 Use Third-Party Uninstaller
If none of the above ways have helped you to uninstall the target app or you still get “error opening installation log file. Verify that the specified location exists and is writable” message, the last resort you can do is to take advantage of a 3rd-party program that can assist you to uninstall applications.
Windows 11 Assistant Software Recommended
The new and powerful Windows 11 will bring you many benefits. At the same time, it will also bring you some unexpected damages such as data loss. Thus, it is strongly recommended that you back up your crucial files before or after upgrading to Win11 with a robust and reliable program like MiniTool ShadowMaker, which will assist you to protect your increasing data automatically on schedules!
About The Author
Position: Columnist
Helen Graduated from university in 2014 and started working as a tech editor in the same year. Her articles focus on video creation, editing, and conversion. She also has a good knowledge of disk management and data backup & recovery. Through an in-depth exploration of computer technology, Helen has successfully helped thousands of users solve their annoying problems.