Solution (possibly!) to MSDE Installer Hang

[Database Administrator]

If you're experiencing the MSDE installer hang, this may be the answer.
Background: MSDE installer hangs, with progress bar indicating about 20%
still to run. When you press Cancel, the button is disabled, but the
installer still hangs. If you get the installer to produce a log file, you
see the last thing it attempted was to run setupre.exe.
The quick workaround is to kill the setupre.exe process when the hang occurs.
The root cause may be described in Microsoft’s Knowledge Base article 841061:
http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;841061
They suggest there that your bootstrap program may be causing the hang by
not responding to a synchronous message broadcast to all top level windows.
If that doesn’t apply, you may discover another application on the machine
was causing the hang. In my case, it was “Citi Virtual Account Numbers” made
by Orbiscom, distributed by CitiBank. I’m sure there are other possible
culprits. My guess is that this program is not responding to the synchronous
message broadcast to all top level windows. It has an icon in the tray at the
bottom right.
If you suspect another application is the cause, there may be no alternative
but to start killing off processes until the installer works. Beware, though!
Don't kill processes while the installer is hung, as it still may not resume.
Kill the processes first, then run the installer to see if you killed the
right one.
Perhaps Microsoft could comment on why setupre.exe needs to broadcast
synchronous messages, seeing as it’s the real cause of this hassle.

[I am posting this here, even though this problem has been reported on many
news groups, and a few times on this one, because I can't seem to generate
replies to individual postings in many cases.]