Cannot add profile: there was an error accessing your system registry

[John Faughnan]

While rebuilding a "shattered" Windows XP Pro system (it's a long
story) I reinstalled Office XP and attempted to add a profile to
Outlook. I got the error message "there was an error accessing your
system registry".

A number of google searches and knowledge base searches turned up very
little. One other person posted on this but there was no fix. Since
I've fixed it, I figure I'll share what I did for the benefit of
others.

Suspicious causes:

1. Installing Visio 2000 and FrontPage 2000 AFTER installing Office
Pro XP. I'm especially suspicious of Visio, which replaced some system
files and installed an old version of Visual Basic.

Cure:

1. Completely uninstalled Office XP and FrontPage 2000. Restarted.
2. Installed Office XP Pro with FrontPage (FP 2002). Did not install
service packs at this point.
3. Added the profile successfully.
4. Installed the service packs.

I think this was a spurious error message. I think the problem was not
related to the registry.

(e-mail address removed)
meta: jfaughnan, jgfaughnan, Outlook XP, Windows XP, cannot add
profile, registry error, configuration, setup, errro