Design live

I was unpleasantly surprised by Windows Live Writer 2008 installation. While with other blog clients ( BlogDesk, BlogJet, W.bloggar etc.) I had no problems at all, every time I got a couple of errors installing Windows Live Writer.  Most of the time I get error ‘It looks like you’re offline’ though it was everything ok with internet. Even if I managed to go further I get errors 0×80070641 or 0×80070643.

After number of unsuccessful attempts I contact Microsoft support and was amazed by quick and polite answer.

This is a follow up regarding your concern on being unable to install the Windows Live Writer. The instructions below are taken from http://support.microsoft.com/kb/943595/en-us It will install only Writer but if you got to the KB Article then you can easily modify these steps to add in the remaining suite.

1. If you do not have a local copy of the WLSetup.exe then get one: http://g.live.com/1rewlive/en/WLSetup.exe

2. Create a file called "config.txt" and save it in the same directory that WLSetup.exe is in.

3. In the file "config.txt" copy to the beginning of the file and save it.
p=5DC07600-AAF3-11DA-A746-0800200C9A66*0&t=1&s=0&m=EN-US
Please note that there in the above value there is a ‘&t=1′ that means that you accept our Terms of Usage which can be found here:
a. http://tou.live.com/en-us/default.aspx
b. http://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/default.aspx

4. Open a cmd window and change directory to where WLSetup.exe is.

5. Type in the cmd window: WLSetup.exe /silent /configfile: config.txt

Since this will be running in silent mode then you cannot tell that it is done, but it is really quite fast, so wait a few minutes and Writer should be installed for you.

We appreciate your continued support as we strive to provide you with the highest quality service available. Thank you for using Windows Live Writer.

The provided solution by Microsoft was unacceptable since I pay for internet traffic. I really don’t understand the suggestion to download 50 MB version of Windows Live Suite (Mail, Messenger, Toolbar etc.) just to install 5 MB Windows Live Writer.

In my search for solutions I found this review on Google Operating System blog and link to download Windows Live Writer beta release which installed like a charm. 

Update
I found standalone version of Windows Live Writer 2008 (only 4,2 mb, pass garmahis.com, you can also download from mirror) Just double click downloaded file and Windows Live Writer installs like a charm. Make sure you are have not disabled any Windows services (by tweaker or manually) which should be running by default (in Microsoft opinion).

In conclusion, Microsoft doesn’t care much about their customers yet. They’d like to try to force you to install the whole bunch of their applications even if you don’t need them. And another solution is to not use Windows Live Writer at all since there are a lot of more user friendly blog clients on the market.