Same symptoms, different cause. SOLVED:
Read this whole post before doing any of it.
In Windows 7 (don't know about the others) the installer uses rundll32.exe and dies as above when rundll32 is corrupted or missing.
To restore rundll32, follow the instructions below, expanded on those by Charles York, posted at answers answers DOT microsoft DOT com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-system/windows-7-rundll32exe-corrupt/bec29408-1a77-4703-bf03-dc73069aa838 [as a new member I can't post URLs].
Note that in the command prompt window, highlighting is block-orientated as opposed to line-orientated. This implies that if the directory name you want to copy contains a line break, you must copy and paste it in parts. The parts pasted together must not have any spaces in, unless the directory name has spaces, in which case you need to enclose it in double quotes.
If you can't find rundll32.exe using the above, try plan B in Charles's post. If that doesn't work either, search the Net for how to recover run32dll.exe from installation media. Using the installation media is quicker than plan B, though.