well alright.
so this was with 2 pieces of software that microsoft makes(visual studio and office) and im sure it will happen with other software that use .MSI or their built in installer. if the installer fails for whatever reason, after it fails, instead of stopping the actual installer executable in the background, they keep running. the way windows is set up you can only have 2 install/uninstaller executable's running at the same time.
so if 2 installers fail, you can't install or uninstall anything because there are already 2 of them running. well there is a program that will help aleviate this issue, but if the installers are already running, it won't work. in previous versions of windows just restarting your computer usually stopped one of the executable installers, or turning them off as autoruns when you boot.
well the bug is it doesnt work that way and you have to manually stop those executable's from running, or you will never be able to install/uninstall anything else. its a stupid bug and needs to be fixed pronto.