Here is a possible fix for fixing errors that might have occurred during an install of AutoCAD (or any other program) that is preventing you from doing a “repair” or “Re-install.”

Scenario: An issue that has happened at work a few times recently was that a user updated to a new version of AutoCAD but for some reason it doesn’t open. I would then check to see if the files seemed to be copied correctly and tried to manually launch the acad.exe but that didn’t work either. I then went to the computer’s “Control Panel” to do a “Repair” or “Reinstall” of the new version of AutoCAD. The version of AutoCAD seems to be listed in the list of programs but once it is selected, the “Control Panel” says that it can’t be repaired because there was an error during installation.

Once these frustrating steps were tried over and over again, the common fix was to have the user’s machine re-imaged so that a fresh install could be applied. That is, until we found this useful link from Microsoft: http://support.microsoft.com/mats/Program_Install_and_Uninstall

It is a free utility from Microsoft that finds errors of an install that will hopefully allow the program to be successfully uninstalled and then re-installed.

I hope that this utility can help

~Greg