Error Message: “The operation failed due to an installation problem. Restart Outlook and try again.”

I received this error message this morning when I opened Outlook 2003 with a new user profile. It opened fine with the local Administrator account.

I checked the Windows Event Viewer and there’s a “Warning” entry there for MsiInstaller (Event ID 1004) with a description of “Detection of product… The resource ‘HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Common\UserData’ does not exist.”

Doing the following fixed the problem for me:

  1. Start -> Run -> type in regedit
  2. Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Common
  3. (I recommend that you back up your registry first before making any changes) Right-click on Common -> New -> DWORD Value. Name it UserData
  4. Double click on the DWORD you just created (UserData) and set Value data: to 1
  5. Close the Registry Editor and open Outlook again