InstallShield Problem

[tillysaint]

All of a sudden I started to have problems with my T61 XP Pro system that is up-to-date. I can't isolate my situation to a particular event so I've been shooting the problems. I've had the T61 for about 6 months now. I back-leveled from Vista to XP.

I had a problem with IE7 so I uninstalled it & reverted to IE6 for now. The main IE7 problem that I saw was the IE7 - Tools - Options- Advanced - Settings were missing, they were completely blank. I tried Restoring & Resetting them but that didn't work. I tried a lot of other web solutions that didn't work also.

I have one other problem. When I attempt to install anything that requires the InstallShield (e.g., ThinkAdvantage Update), I get the message "Setup failed to launch installation engine. Class not registered" and when I attempt to reinstall InstallShield I get the message "The installshield engine (ikernel.exe) could not be launched, Class not registered."

I've tried several solutions from the web - assuring that I have administrative rights, deleting InstallShield Common Files, verifying Registry Permissions, restarting, used registry cleaners, etc. without success.

When I now run ThinkAdvantage System Update it indicates some updates that are already installed on my system. When I manually install a required update (from the Lenovo website) that ThinkAdvantage did list System Update still indicates my system requires the update. Again, when I choose a particular update on the ThinkAdvantage System Update screen I get the "Setup failed to launch installation engine. Class not registered."

Any advice? Thanks, Ron (Tilly)