Installing Windows Live Writer on 64-bit Windows

I’ve been all 64-bit, minus a number of Linux and Windows 32-bit virtual machines that I trash use for specific tasks, for over two years now. I initially had some issues with driver support, but – other than this – have been impressed, from the very beginning, with the stability and performance of the 64-bit versions of XP and Vista.

That said, one thing I haven’t been impressed with is Microsoft’s inability to recognize that once you put a version of an operating system out there, you need to support it. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to install a Microsoft software product on one of my 64-bit machines and been told that it isn’t supported on the 64-bit version of the operating system.

This has changed – at least somewhat – over the last year or so, as more and more people have migrated to 64-bit, so I was taken aback when I downloaded the final release of my favorite blogging client, Windows Live Writer, and discovered that it wouldn’t install on my 64-bit version of XP (for some reason I had no problems installing it on Vista x64, although it seems that others have had problems installing on Vista x64, as well). The crazy thing about this is that all of the beta versions of Windows Live Writer installed fine on XP x64, but when Microsoft moved to their all-in-one Windows Live installer they moved away from distributing an .msi and to distributing an .exe that wouldn’t work on 64-bit. What they were thinking, I can’t say, and they *still haven’t released a 64-bit compatible version of the installer, although it seems that doing so would meet the needs of a fairly large group of users and would be a fairly trivial task.

[Steps off of soap box]

Now, on to how to fix this problem:

1. If you have a beta version of Windows Live Writer installed on your machine, uninstall it.
2. Download “Install_{1F973A7F-3FE4-4D11-A9A2-E869C2899A7D}.msi” using the link below.
3. Double-click on the .msi. The install should run and complete, although you won’t be prompted to confirm the install or see any other fancy dialogs.

Sorry, but the download seems to have disappeared.