Solved: The detection failed, this can be due to a corrupted installation database

We’ve been looking at upgrading our MOSS 2007 to 2010 over the last few months. Of course, we need to ensure all the SP’s and patches are in place on our production Sharepoint servers. but the below error kept us baffled for quite some time.

“The detection failed, this can be due to a corrupted installation database”

This is due to a deleted/incomplete Windows install (usually c:\windows\install\) folder and We’ve spent a loooooong pondering over the options of getting around this. There is an excellent post here at :

http://moss2007.kbnk.info/Patching/solved-the-detection-failed-this-can-be-due-to-a-corrupted-installation-database.html

where there are details of a quick fix on this. The scripts he provides worked fantastically and saved us a considerable amount of time.