can't access setup/installer to do anything!!help

[Michael]

I recently installed a new hard drive and copied my old drive files to the
new drive. I made the new drive my boot drive. Now, my Office XP is
driving me crazy!

First, when I try to open any of the Office applications, a dialog box come
up either stating, "Preparing to Install.....an error occurred and this
feature is no longer functioning properly. Please run Setup and select
Repair, " or "The feature you are trying to use is on a CD-ROM that is not
available. Insert the Microsoft Office XP disk and click OK.

If I ignore these messages and click Cancel, the app will run fine after an
annoying wait, but it happens every time.

I also tried inserting my CD to cure the problem, but that doesn't work
either.

The next thing I tried was to go to Add/Remove Programs to try to Repair of
Uninstall Office, it also asks for the CD. When I do that I get a message
that says, "This patch package could not be opened. Verify that the patch
package exists and that you can access it...."

I get the exact same message when I tried to open SETUP.EXE and STD.MSI
from the CD .

I know my CD is okay, because I checked in another computer. In fact, when
I boot from my old drive, everything works fine.

What is it with the way that Microsoft uses Windows Installer that causes
this behavior and how can I fix it? (It's also happening with another
Microsoft product, Windows Server 2003 guided tour, which I downloaded. )

 

[Sean]

I have the same problem. I get the exact same error
messages.

-----Original Message-----
I recently installed a new hard drive and copied my old drive files to the
new drive. I made the new drive my boot drive. Now, my Office XP is
driving me crazy!

First, when I try to open any of the Office

applications, a dialog box come

 

[Michael]

This can be caused by several things, but to correct it you will need
to zap the Windows Installer entry in the Registry and reinstall
Office.

MS Installer Cleanup utility for Office XP:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=290301

Thanks, Beth, but the support page says that the cleanup utility is not
supported for Windows Xp, which I have. I tried using the version for
Windows 2000, but Office XP wouldn't show on the fix list.

 

[Frederick C. GIbson Architect]

Hi Beth,

I have the same problem with Windows 2000 and Office
2000. I started getting strange errors with Outlook, so I
tried installing all Office service packages. After
installing SR-1, Outlook had the same errors. Now, If I
try to reinstall or uninstall Outlook, I get this error
(see article 295823)
"This patch package could not be opened. Contact the
application vendor to verify that this is a valid Windows
Installer patch package."

The interesting problem here is that if you have windows
installer 2.0 or greater (which I do have), there is
nothing you can do according to this article.

What can I do?? I can't uninstall and I can't reinstall -
ACK!

Thanks,

Fred Gibson

 

[Michael]

I fixed my own problem!
I don't know if this will help anyone else. In my case, I had copied one
drive to another before the problem cropped up on my new drive. What I
discovered is that there is a hidden folder in C:\WINDOWS called Installers
where the Windows installer files are kept. For some reason, none of these
files were copied to my new drive. So, I manually copied them and voila!
Problem fixed.