Error 2738 Occurs When Installing An MSI Package

This occurs when there’s a problem running vbscript with elevated permissions. To confirm that its the problem run the MSI installer from the command line (with administrator permissions – right click on the command prompt link in the start menu and select run as administrator) like this:

MSIEXEC /i <msi package> /lv log.txt

Once the error occurs open the log file and look for the following output:

DEBUG: Error 2738:  Could not access VBScript runtime for custom action 

We need to re-register the vbscript dll for this error to be resolved. First step is to remove the old registration by deleting the registry key:

# 32 bit windows
HKCU\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{B54F3741-5B07-11CF-A4B0-00AA004A55E8}

# 64 bit windows
HKCU\SOFTWARE\Classes\Wow6432Node\CLSID\{B54F3741-5B07-11CF-A4B0-00AA004A55E8}

Once this is done you need to re-register the DLL using the following command:

# 32 bit windows
cd %windir%\system32 
regsvr32.exe vbscript.dll

# 64 bit windows
cd %windir%\ syswow64
regsvr32.exe vbscript.dll