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Reintstall Lotus123 w/ WIN98 problem

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Cappyknz

Technical User
Sep 4, 2003
4
US
Please help me!! Recently had problems with the spell check ( message was that spell check was not installed...came installed from the factory when I bought it!!) on WordPro and message to unistall and reinstall LotusSmart Suite appeared. Did what the message said, tried to reinstall and the computer freezes up witht eh message "locating previous files, etc." I completely unistalled the program and now I have no system on my computer. I am not a real technical person, so I will try to answer and detailed questions the best that I can. I even upgraded my symantec antivirus thinking that I got bitten by something along the way. I am at my wits end and will be starting school in 2 weeks so I need help!! Thanks in advance....
 
What version?
Do you have data files that need to be saved?

I've reinstalled millenium 9.5 several times without problem.

If it's one of the millenium versions you could
a) if you have data you want to save, back up the work directory as a precaution
b) now that everything is uninstalled, put in the cd, select the install icon and go forward answering the questions. (It might be best to disable the antivirus before you start the install, just to prevent any conflicts)
 
Thanks for the quick response...This is the first time in the last 4 yrs. that I have had any problems with my Lotus Smart Suite Millennium Edition. I tried to do what you suggested, even disabling my antivirus, and it did the same thing again-it almost sounds as if the computer stops reading the disc. The disc has been in the envelope since I bought the computer, so could it be a bad disc? Since I am obviously out of warranty, how do I go about replacing this disc? I apologize for my ignorance, as it appears that you are an expert on this subject. I again appreciate any and all help on this problem.
Lauran
 
I am a long ways from an expert-so I dont know if I can help or not.
First question should probably be - what is your operating system? I've worked with 98 & 98se.

When you say it did the same thing as before-does that mean it is still giving you the error message about locating previous files too?

I doubt that your cd is bad, you could check the cd player by seeing if it reads other cds ok. I suspect that it will turn out to be a software issue of some kind.

Start, settings, control panel, add/remove programs
is the lotus smartsuite listing gone from there?

Start,settings, taskbar and startmenu, startmenu programs, remove, programs folder -- are there any lotus smartsuite entries there? If there are, go ahead and remove them.

Start, find, files/folders named Lotus
are there any entries other than c:\lotus or a longer tree that begins with c:\lotus ?

Do you by any chance have/use the programs Spybot and/or JV16 powertools?






 
duh-I see os in your heading-sorry.

the other thing I forgot to ask is have you recently added or removed other software that might be affecting the lotus?
 
cappyknz
Your original post indicated something of a time problem so I've been kind of watching this for followup. Since none has come, I assume you've fixed your problem.
If you haven't and you're still in need of help, you can make a post in the win95 win98 forum that will be seen by more people. Make it an original post, dont tag it onto another thread, indicate something like trouble completely uninstalling an application in order to reinstall it and then you can refer to this thread for original description of the problem. The people there may not be specifically familiar with smartsuite, but will have a lot of knowledge about the process of getting something off and back on.
Good Luck.
 
Sorry about getting back to you, but there was a small family emergency this weekend. I did what you said but to no avail....I think I will just reboot the whole darn thing and cross my fingers...If the Lotus disc is bad, could i just buy Office 2000 and install it or do I have to replace it with the Lotus? Thanks again,
Lauran
 
I'm not an office user so I dont know specifically, but I would expect you could install any version of office you cared to install. That would be your decision.

If your Lotus cd is bad, or if you wanted to upgrade it, you can find Lotus smartsuite in a variety of versions on ebay. I've purchased several versions of smartsuite there. The Lotus package will be much cheaper than Office.
Also as I said before, it is possible, but I doubt that your cd is damaged.

As far as win98 is concerned, my feeling from having watched the 95/98 forum for awhile, is that sometimes computer files just get corrupted and you have to do something to fix them.

You could have virus problems, you could have hardware problems, you could have other troubles that I'm not experienced enough to recognize. I've made around 5 installs of millenium versions and all I've had to do is insert the cd and answer questions and everything has run smoothly-so my opinion here is just speculation on my part.
But-your initial error message makes me think that there are software conflicts due to an incomplete uninstall of Lotus. I know that that can happen in other products, so I assume it is possible in Lotus too. The fix for that situation involves manually deleting files and sometimes removing some registry entries as well, and then retrying the install. The registry part of that has some danger to it and it is your choice whether to do it or not. But the first and easiest step is to find out what Lotus files are still on your system. You may not be technical, but you can do the listings I described above, and you need to get that info for anyone to try to help you.

If there are still any smartsuite entries in add/remove programs, they need to go away, either by running the program's uninstall option, or using a utility such as jv16 power tools to clean up the list ( thread615-545642 ).

Any programs in the startmenu should be removed as mentioned above.

The last find step involves finding other lotus files on the system, and my recommendation here will be to delete them all AFTER you have your data backed up ok.

After all that is fixed, then there are two choices.
One is to go ahead and look for registry entries and remove them and then try reinstall, the other is to try a reinstall first and if that doesnt work, go through the file removal process again, remove registry entries and then try the reinstall. If that still doesnt do it, then a post in another forum and asking for other help would be in order, but based on that message about looking for previous version files, i hope that getting rid of Lotus stuff currently on the system will allow the re-install to work properly.
 
Im just putting these here so they are available for reference. In the first one, you can see the general idea I was talking about. The others are likely to be pretty confusing, dont worry about them at the moment.




 
You have been soooooooo helpful....I will try this when I get done here and let you know if you have cured my "ills"...Lauran
 
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