Well, it was a good try.......good news / bad news;

I found the file in the following directory:

c:\Program Files\JavaSoft\JRE\1.3.1_02\bin

....and copied it to the LimeWire directory. Bad news is that....double clicking on the runlime.jar file produces the same result; I get the "lock error" message......

BUT -

Running the runlime.bat file now seems to work and exit as it should. So, I'm thinking that If I could somehow create an appropriate shortcut that would "start" in the right directories....i'd be all set???

B.B.S.

Is the file you sent me the link to any different than the one I found in the Java directory.....??

instmsia.exe (for WinNT/2000/XP) or instmisaw.exe(for Wi***/98/SE/ME) is the installer program for the Microsoft Windows Installer (compatible with the newest XP behavior).
It seems that this Windows component has been damaged, so this causes the error you have.
If the LimeWire installer cannot get it to work, than you should visit the Microsoft Windows Update web site, to reinstall some components (such as Internet Explorer or any new tool from Microsoft that uses this installer).
Note that the Windows Installer, opposed to most installer programs for Windows applications, is un updatable component. Its advantage is that each installed application can reuse the same installer program to register itself correctly on the system, so it saves megabytes of space on your disk, and it benefits from updated rules that make it work on many different situations, where as many installation programs have only be tested on much less types of configurations.
This installer is a licensed software from a commercial non-Microsoft installer, which has greater install functionalities than the limited Microsoft version: these functionalities only allow more scriptable actions within the installation script for specific applications, but the core components are the same.

I know that that file is from MS installer wich is now up to version 2.0 .
But on my system it still tries to download that file even if i have the latest one installed .

So that's useless info .

We need an LW developer inhere .

LimeWire, by itself, does not need MSINSTIA, the Windows Installer.
Only the installation program needs it, because it is based on the InstallShield install engine, which is now compatible makes uses of the Microsoft Windows Installer core libraries.

I think that you may have a corrupted installation of the InstallShield engine, and it fails upgrading itself automatically.
You should visit the InstallShield support web site to find solutions to your problem.

You may also use the latest version of the Microsoft Registry Cleaner to detect and clean up corrupted Windows components registration. (Warning! don't forget the backup of cleaned entries). One spossible source of problems is that your registry references a component (such as an OCX or shared DLL) which is no more in the registered directory, or that has been renamed or erased.

Check the presence of the VER32.DLL file in the System directory. This file is absolutely required by ALL installation engines on Win32. This file is now part of the core Windows system, but using an outdated version of this file may render some newer versions of installation engines completely inoperable (the Ver32 system library contains functions used to get version information about installed files). Some bogous software come with their own copy of this system file, and overwrite it with an outdated version. This file is most often unused from outside of an installation procedure.

If you have installed Microsoft Office, you may check its components (because Office installs its own installer based on the Windows Installer core engine): click on Help, System Information, then use one of the proposed tools.

This also applies if you have Windows 98SE or ME or XP, because they also provide a version of the MSINFO32.EXE tool used to perform these checks. Then you can run "msinfo32.exe" directly from the Start Menu, Execute command...