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Access 2003 Reinstalls Every Time

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idrawstuff

Technical User
Feb 10, 2005
17
US
Hi! I previously had Office XP installed via Group Policy on several workstations, and for various reasons outlined elsewhere on the site, I upgraded to Office 2003. At the time I upgraded, I didn't know anything about what a Group Policy was (our IT guy left the company some time back, and as of yet we haven't been able to replace him). So when shortcuts to Office XP kept reinstalling itself after every reboot, I tried various things to stop it before I learned (through this site, actually) about Group Policies and what actually went wrong.

The solution, by the way, was to disable the Group Policy and THEN upgrade to Office 2003.

We have eight workstations in the office, and two were used as guinea pigs. On the two test computers, I had done full uninstalls and reinstalls prior to finding my solution. On the rest, I upgraded from the original installs after disabling the group policy. When I was finished, I installed SP3 on all workstations.

On the six upgrades, every thing works fine. On the two that were done as full installs, Access 2003 has to reinstall itself every time I open the program up.

I did some research and found seemed to at least address the problem. It gives advice on how to manually change the registry:

To resolve this problem, manually change the registry on the computer where Access 2003 does not start as expected. To do this, follow these steps:
1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
2. Locate and then click the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Jet\4.0\Engines\Excel
3. In the right pane, right-click win32, and then click Modify.
4. In the Value data box, type the following, and then click OK:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\msaexp30.dll
Note This path is for the default location. If the Msaexp30.dll file is located on another drive or in another folder, use the path of the actual drive and folder.
5. Exit Registry Editor, and then start Access 2003.

However, on the two computers in which I did full installs, the "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Jet\4.0\Engines\Excel" doesn't exist. It exists on all computers that the upgrade was done on (I imagine it has something to do with upgrading from a Group Policy, but I'm no expert), but that doesn't really matter because SP3 addressed those issues.

So my question, finally, is if anyone knows how I can fix this problem on my two guinea pigs? Is there a different place I can edit the registry? I have a Win32 file in a "...Engines/Sharepoint" folder, but so does the six upgrades.

Any thoughts?
 
Have you tried
... a repair of Office?
... a complete Office uninstall, reboot and install?
... uninstalling Office, rebooting and installing to a different path?
... creating the folder(s) for the registry / check to see that the dll file exists.
 
Thanks for the response! Please bare with me, as I am by NO means a pro. I also think I've figured out what my next move should be just by your train of logic...

Answers:

1) I did try a repair of Office, without success.

2) This was actually the result of an uninstall/reboot/wait, why is Office XP still here?!/uninstall again/run officecln/reinstall/reboot/XP is back again!/disable group policy and uninstall Office XP.

I believe the next thing to try would be a complete uninstall/reboot/reinstall NOW, since the Group Policy is now disabled.

3)I have not tried installing to a different path, although I can try that if #2 doesn't work.

4)I have not tried creating folders for the registry, as I assumed it was some kind of carry over from the old group policy. Do you think I should try that first, or do you think I should try that if all other options fail?

Thanks again for helping out a noob!
 
Side note: I couldn't remove Office XP from my workstation once the group policy was disabled without running the Windows Installer Cleanup Utility, as the professional IT guy I called out completely removed the installation media from the server before I had a chance to uninstall from the workstations...
 
I would change the registry as a next to last resort and last in the options I mentioned. I am not familiar with the Windows Installer Cleanup Utility but I suspect it must have left some stuff behind. This is why I suggested an alternatate install path. That is basically how you are supposed to install office if you have mulitple versions on the same computer. Installing to a different path should isolate it and hopefully allow it to coexist.

Although, assumeing there is a leftover problem, you might try installing the same edition (professional vs. standard) of Office XP on those computers from any media and then uninstall etc. This would be cleaner although I expect that the installation to a different path may be a suitable work around if you don't have an installation method.

The last reort is always reinstalling the computers. Unless of course that doesn't work. :)
 
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