Redownload would probably be your best bet.

What else have you tried?

What would you suggest?

Tried disabling AVG and S&D, and that doesn't help.

As a note, in case it isn't obvious enough from the screenshot-that progress bar is at 0%.  It's doing this as it's beginning the install.

And yes, I have the latest .net (3.5), if that's relevant.

Redownloading it now...got my fingers crossed.

I'm somewhat disappointed that Impulse doesn't have a direct install option for demos like SDC had, though.

The case of this error message when installing the full version over the demo is the case of registry values already being there from the demo. But since you're installing the demo itself I can't fathom how there would be a registry conflict. Impulse is just now starting to roll out demos and such, perhaps a separate post in the Impulse forum (so it gets seen by people who can do this) will get them to publish the Sins demo on it.

You can also try e-mailing support@stardock.com and see if they'll help, I honestly don't know if they care that it's the demo and not the retail, but it's definitely worth a try.

Oh snap! Well, that settles that then

Try searching the net for the demo from a third party. So odd...

Another program is probably interfering with installation. Other than anti-virus/spyware/adware, I don't know what.

I have autoupdates set to notify & ask, and it hasn't had any activity in at least ten days.

Went to softwarepatch and got WInstaller 4.5 (just in case I didn't have it already; last one I remember was 3.xx).

Only entries in \Drengin.net are GCII and TPM.

And, yeah...still doesn't work.

Tried safe mode, just because.  Installer complains that the installer service can't be accessed, and says this might happen in safe mode.  Tried manually starting the installer service, but Windows returns an error and tells me I can't start it in safe mode.  (Silly Microsoft, I WANT to start it in safe mode!)

-

On the bright side...the insanely long "verifiying" that the installer does would not appear to have much, if anything, to do with the problem.  On the not so bright side, extracting the files from the downloaded executable with Winrar and then running either the setup.exe or the .msi produces the same results as before...only faster, since now I don't have to wait for it to check the file integrity every time.

And sent an email to support after my last post-already got the autoreply back (two actually, the one where they tell you someone will look at it and the one where they tell you to check the FAQs).  So hopefully they can find it, and maybe before we do.

"I haven't failed, I've just found ten thousand ways that don't work!"

This is strange, but I suggest using the Impulse demo (and not the outside download).

• Click on the My Games tab.
• In the upper-right, click the arrow button.
• This will display a bunch of options. Click the Options button and select Show demos.
• You should see a demo for Sins of a Solar Empire.
• Select this and click Install.

This should do the trick.