Internal MSI error. Installer terminated prematurely

[Duncan]

Since installing Windows Installer 4.5 on Vista (or the RC of Vista SP2), the
application of ANY msp file now results in an internal MSI error and the
patch fails to apply.
The only event in the event log is Event ID 1013: “Internal MSI error.
Installer terminated prematurely.”
This means that Windows Update, also fails when it tries to install Office
2007 updates, as these are often in msp format. In these cases Windows Update
exists with error code: 80070641.

I've switched on verbose Windows Installer logging but so far the log files
haven't given me much of a clue as to where the problem might lie.

The last few lines in the log file read:
“MSI (s) (64:38) [23:51:05:953]: Internal Exception during install
operation: 0xc0000005 at 0xFE1FF1E8.
MSI (s) (64:38) [23:51:05:953]: WER report disabled for silent install.
MSI (s) (64:38) [23:51:05:953]: Internal MSI error. Installer terminated
prematurely.

MSI (s) (64:38) [23:51:05:953]: MainEngineThread is returning 1603
MSI (s) (64:B0) [23:51:05:953]: RESTART MANAGER: Session closed.
MSI (s) (64:B0) [23:51:05:953]: No System Restore sequence number for this
installation.
Windows Installer terminated prematurely.”

I'm willing to accept it's possibly something to do with my Vista
configuration, which is causing this. However, as this issue never occurred
under Windows Installer 4.0, (before runing the RC of Vista SP2, I'd just
rollback the MSI 4.5 update to 4.0, and everything would be fine), I'd like
to get to the bottom of this.

Does anyone have an idea as to where to start?

Thanks in advance.

[mastersm]

I have the extact same problem and no one at Microsoft knows how to fix it
except reinstalling.