A fair number of people have reported that Windows 7 Beta has been crashing when trying to install software using a MSI (Microsoft Installer) based installer. This seems to be happening alot when using Windows Update function.

The culprit has been discovered & it is Microsoft’s Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP). There is a fix available and it is discribed below. However the only issue with this fix is that it will disable the CEIP which Beta testers use to report bugs to MS. If you do use this fix I suggest you keep a eye out for mMS update that fixes it.

The fix involves changing your registry on your Windows 7 machine. As I write this I am going through the steps.

• This all needs to run under Administrator rights so log into the Admin account
• Open up the start menu and type run into the search, and click “Run”
• Type regedit into the command, this will run registry editor
• Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/MICROSOFT/SQMClient/Windows/DisabledSessions
• You then need to delete all values in here EXCEPT the default one
• Go to the “Run” command again
• Type gpedit.msc into the command, this will run the Group Policy editor
• Go into Computer Configuration/Administrative Templates/System/Internet Communication Management/Internet Communication settings
• Double click “Turn off Windows Customer Experience Improvement Program
• In the new window click “Enabled”, and “Apply”, and “OK”

This will disable the data that you send to MS, but if it is stopping you from installing software its advisable to do it. I would follow these steps. Then insall what you need to & then re-enable the CEIP. Hopefully MS will produce a fix for this, but in the time being this is the only way round it.

This is a more in depth step through that was provided by chris123nt.

Tags: beta, ceip, crash, group_polices, MSI, registry, windows7