We have been distributing MSDE SP3A for about 1.5 years now with our
application and about 1 month ago we started running into problems.

On a Windows 2000 SP4 machine, the following occurs:

sqlmangr.exe has generated errors and will be closed by Windows.
You will need to restart the program.
An error log is being created.

Here is what is in the Event Log after install and reboot (in this order):

Performance counters for the MSSQL$CITITECH service were loaded
successfully. The Record Data contains the new index values assigned to this
service.

The description for Event ID ( 19011 ) in Source ( MSSQL$CITITECH ) cannot
be found. The local computer may not have the necessary registry information
or message DLL files to display messages from a remote computer. The
following information is part of the event: (SpnRegister) : Error 1355.

Product: Microsoft SQL Server Desktop Engine -- Installation operation
completed successfully.

The description for Event ID ( 19011 ) in Source ( MSSQL$CITITECH ) cannot
be found. The local computer may not have the necessary registry information
or message DLL files to display messages from a remote computer. The
following information is part of the event: (SpnRegister) : Error 1355.

The application, , generated an application error The error occurred on
09/29/2006 @ 12:12:54.862 The exception generated was c0000005 at address
780104AC (wcslen)

The last one was generated by Dr Watson.

I have a little application that I installed (vb6) that goes out and gets
the list of SQL Servers. It now errors too but gives a little more
information than the sqlmangr.exe error:

-2147221499
[SQL-DMO]Code executions exception: EXEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION

This error comes up every time the computer is rebooted.
If I go get the latest Windows Updates, everything works fine but, this has
to be done after MSDE is installed. It does not good to have then before I
install.

More information:
On XP SP2, after I reboot, I get an error that is then asks me to send to
Microsoft. Everything works but you get the error after the first reboot.
On Win2K3 Server, everthing is OK

I usually test on VPC 2004 and have a fresh install of Win2K SP4 installed.
(And yes, I have tried on a regular PC and got the same results)

The really strange thing is that with the same VPC instance I always use
with undo disk so no changes are kept, and the same CD that worked before, I
get this error now.

(Installing, getting windows updates, then installing the rest of the
application is not an accepted answer)

I have tried everything but have given up, any would be great!

I hope I supplied enough information to . :-)