So i spent the evening reinstalling the OS. Havnt got round to trying SQL server express yet, but hopefully this will have fixed it. Shame something so snnoying requires a...

Thanks

Anybody else got any ideas that I may not have tried?

Reinstallation is really my very last option because of the time it would take to reconfigure everything.

Additional Information.

With everything uninstalled, all keys removd from regedit, and all directories deleted, I still get this when I try to install the SQL server 2005 express.