Office Web Applications re-installation

Question

I have a SharePoint Server 2010 installation which had some problems. A backup was made of the SP web applications, and SharePoint was uninstalled, then reinstalled. Unfortunately, it also had Office Web Apps installed, and things weren't done in the right order. Now I need to install Office Web Apps again, but can't as the setup program stops with this error message:

Microsoft Office Web Apps encountered an error during setup.

Could not open key: UNKNOWN\Components\97E764D0FEBDA2744ACE799C10C3D8E9\00004109441100000100
Verify that you have sufficient access to that key, or contact your support personnel.

Has anyone encountered this? Is there a list somewhere of the steps needed to manually remove all traces of the previous installation of Office Web Apps?

Thanks in advance! :) Thomas

Answer 1

I followed the directions here http://ctrlf5.net/?p=152 and I was able to reinstall sucessfully.

Answer 2

In my experience, order of operation is extremely important during an install and even more so when you start adding in other services like Office Web Applications or Project Server. Uninstalling SharePoint or any of those services are possible, but it is likely impossible to get back to the right starting point without just starting again with the base OS.

If I get into a position where I hit a bad enough obstacle that I am going to uninstall something, it is often quickest to just rollback to the base OS and start installing again.