Windows Installer Service Problems

So for a while now, I kept getting the message "The Windows Installer Service could not be accessed. This can occur if you are running Windows in safe mode, or if the Windows Installer is not correctly installed. Contact your support personnel for assistance." Today, I got frustrated by it, and decided to fix it, however I'm having problems.

I backed up all the old dlls and exes associated with the msi service per Microsoft's website's instructions and reinstalled the windows installer. This did not fix my problem.

I proceeded to verify that I had the right path in the registry under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\MSIServer in the ImagePath variable. I did. It was the default msiexec location, with the ValueData in ImagePath reading C:\WINDOWS\system32\msiexec.exe /V. This solved the original problem, however now my Microsoft installer is stuck in the preparing to install mode. I waited 10 minutes for it to prepare. When I felt that it was obvious that the installation was a failed venture, I canceled. The windows installer then got stuck canceling the installation process. I'm not sure how to proceed from here. Any help would be appreciated.