Office XP Problem

K

King of Creation

Vault Fossil
So after installing my new hard drive (http://www.nma-fallout.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10664), making it the boot drive, and copying the whole old drive to the new one via the Western Digital software that came with it, I found I have a huge problem. Namely in my Office XP Professional software....in that I can't use it anymore. When I try to start Microsoft Word, I get "An error occured and this feature is no longer functioning properly. Please run Setup and select "Repair..." to restore this application." I then hit OK, which is the only option listed, and Word opens up. However, a dialogue box comes up saying "Microsoft Office XP has detected a significant change in your machine configuration. blah blah blah" and it wants me to Reactivate the product. In order to do this it requires the office cd to be in the drive. So I put it in the drive. Problem is though, that Office is accessing the damn floppy drive and not the cd drive, so I'm screwed out of that. ALSO, when I try to UNISTALL the whole Office suite, I find that I am UNABLE to do so. When I try to, it says "The patch package could not be opened. Verify that the patch package exists and that you can access it, or contact the application vendor to verify that this is a valid Windows Installer patch package." I get basically the same message when I try to run setup off of the cd. Also, I went to the microsoft website to try and find a solution, to no avail. I tried Office Update, but got "Office Update is unable to check for updates" with one of the possible reasons being Windows Installer patch files (.MSP files) from previously applied Office updates are missing from the \Windows\Installer hidden directory on your computer. MSP files are stored on your computer after update installation completes because they need to be referenced for future update operations. If the files are missing you will not be able to apply Office updates. You may also be unable to uninstall Office products as a result of the same problem. Please contact Microsoft Product Support Services for assistance. " except that the page they link me to doesn't exist.

HELP!
 
While that might be a neat alternative (thanks, btw), it still doesn't solve my problem.

EDIT: Ahhhh...one of the guys down the hall has solved the problem. In case anyone else ever has this problem, I'll detail the steps.
First, download Windows Installer CleanUp - http://download.microsoft.com/download/e/9/d/e9d80355-7ab4-45b8-80e8-983a48d5e1bd/msicuu2.exe
Then, install and run it. Select Microsoft Office XP, and then click remove. This removes the Windows Installer registry settings for the office installation.
Then, just reinstall Office.

Voila!
 
Format HDD, reinstall Windows?

Hey, it works for most problems with Windows. Actually the best alround solution to Windows problems is "Format HDD, install Linux", but that's a wee bit off topic I guess.
 
clean your registry, it will solve the problem.

and while you at it, install office 2003, it is way more nicer then xp.
 
Problem with Linux is, that it's Linux. And requires too much time to fiddle with things to make them work at all, while Windows works automatically, and needs far less amount of fiddling to keep it running.

Firefox is about the only thing worth using, if you're a paranoid X-Files type.
 
Very true, Dove.

I had a brilliant suggestion all planned out until I read that it was solved. Basically I was going to suggest the same thing, more or less, using a combination of TweakUI (gives you access to the "secret" settings in Windows... Very, very slick app) and Norton Utilities.

I can't take generic Windows/MS bashers seriously, because, yeah, windows/microsoft products are full of bugs/issues/etc, but they do so much stuff it's a wonder they work at all, never mind as well as they do.
 
Problem with Linux is, that it's Linux. And requires too much time to fiddle with things to make them work at all, while Windows works automatically, and needs far less amount of fiddling to keep it running.

Firefox is about the only thing worth using, if you're a paranoid X-Files type.
Click to expand...
Not if you get the right distribution. Fedora Core 3 almost always works out of the box, and so do several other distributions. Linux isn't hard, but it's hard to step off of Windows. There is only one actually good excuse not to use Llinux: games. And even that isn't always true, if you have an nVidia card you can get a long way.
 
SP2 is EVIL! I still have it installed and the annoying internet security bar that pops up at the top of IE alone makes it too annoying to be worth having it. When I go to download anything, half the time it pops up and I have the click it and reload the page again just so windows knows I'm "sure" I want to download a file.
 
SP2 is EVIL! I still have it installed and the annoying internet security bar that pops up at the top of IE alone makes it too annoying to be worth having it. When I go to download anything, half the time it pops up and I have the click it and reload the page again just so windows knows I'm "sure" I want to download a file.
Click to expand...
Why won't you people just learn to just use Mozilla Firefox?

PS; I haven't had one problem with SP2 yet. Might be because I think I've disabled practically everything it does. *shrugs*

EDIT: 110Kb sig? Tsk.
 
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