Reinstalling the InstallShield Engine.

From time to time I have noticed that InstallShield will fail and corrupt itself. This will manifest itself in weird installation errors such as the following:

  1. Ikernel caused an Invalid Page Fault in module unknown.
  2. Setup failed to launch installation engine, no such interface supported.
  3. Error extracting support files: Class not registered.

Although IKernel's website states:

"IKernel is InstallShield's proprietary installation engine. Ikernel exists on your computer to drive the installation. An installation created with InstallShield first attempts to install or update (if an older version of ikernel already exists) the ikernel engine files. After ikernel is successfully installed, the rest of the installation continues installing all of the application files."

It doesn't always go to plan. If you find yourself with unexplainable errors during installations then I suggest you try the following:

  1. Navigate to C:\Program Files\Common Files\InstallShield\
  2. Delete/ rename the engine directory found here.
  3. Install a new copy of IKernel engine which can be sourced from here.
  4. Run the install file.
  5. Try installing the faulting application again.