MS office weird problem

[sonun]

I had this XP working fine. It had office and other regular applications which worked fine before I did this. Actually it wasnt me, it was another user who wanted to install it to run some VB programs.
What he did is described in the Microsoft Knowledge Base Article - 290887.

After this installation for some reason MS office never runs properly. It opens allright, but once inside I cannot open any file, when I try to do a Alt-F -Open, it simply hangs.
I tried it numersous times with teh same result.

I even tried a uninsatll and reinstall of office with the same result.

I dont know what else I should be doing.
Hopefuly not a reinstlla of the OS.
Please advise.

Thanks.

 

[mattjurado]

Try uninstalling office, delete the directory in program files, then do a clean install.

Same problem, try loading the latest service pack(s) for ms office, which you can get off their website.

Might be a more specific fix, but I've never seen this before.

Matt J.

 

[coakerb]

Open WORD and click on HELP on the toolbar..select DETECT AND REPAIR, you may need the original OFFICE CD...for it to repair all office applications.

 

[Caerbanog]

I have seen something similar to this once before. The install may have corrupted the Normal.dot file. Find and delete all instances of this file and when you open word it will create a new Normal.dot.

 

[sonun]

Thanks for the tips.
Will try all that and post back later.

 

[sonun]

Well. No Luck.
I tried all that. But no.
Worse I did a repair, reinstall, uninstall.
Now, I am unable to reinstall Office back again.
I get a amessage when I try to install office.
"The patch package could not be found. Verify that the patch package exits and that you can access it or contact the application vendor that this is a vaid windows installer patch package"
It is a valid, licensed cop of Office XP.
Please advise,
Thanks.

 

[linney]

"Worse I did a repair, reinstall, uninstall". Is this Office or XP itself you refer to. If it was only Office, you could try using System Restore to get back to before the problem with Office.

 

[wahsah]

you have to edit the registry and delete "Patches"

1) Regedit
2) Click on registry - export the whole registry
3) Starting at the top search for "Patches" only in the KEYS
4) rename all folder patches found to something else
5) Keep finding patches, but DO NOT rename AppPatches, you need that
6) When finished, then you can install MS Office.

 

[mattjurado]

Try this...

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;295823&Product=Off2kset

Matt J.

 

[linney]

mattjurado,

Important: The Msicu.exe and Msicuu.exe (Windows Installer CleanUp) utilities are not supported on systems where Microsoft Windows Installer 2.0 or later is installed, including Microsoft Windows XP.