Can't Uninstall Office 97

[mike b]

Trying to uninstall O97 (Win98SE if it matters). Can't do
it - wants the CD with Setup.exe but I don't have them any
more. I already have MSInstaller 2.0 on the machine so the
registry cleaner trick (doesn't delete the files but does
clean out the Registry so it looks uninstalled) mentioned
in an earlier post won't work. Went back thru about 10-12
screens in the NG here and there was no response to other
questions about similar behavior. Can I get one? Help?!

Please respond to the newsgroup so others can get the info.

 

[mike b]

I ended up with a variant on the Micromart trick. Found
somebody at work with an old CD set I could borrow (all I
really needed was CD 1, not the whole set), got Eraser97
here, and was able finally to nuke O97. At least there's
enough old Microsoft software around that if you really
need something you can probably find it.

I do have a bit of a problem with software that really
doesn't really clean up after itself when uninstalled,
though - all the Remove All function seems to do is kill
the Registry keys that point to the pieces of Office,
leaving all the files in place. So it's a non-trivial task
to do a full cleanup. I certainly wouldn't ask my mother
(or even most of the people I work with) to do it!

Of course, the process also nuked a number of things that
other software depended on, so I'm still chasing down
broken pieces and reinstalling them - had to reinstall IE6
for instance, which of course meant another hour online
getting the updates again. Oh well, it's done now and the
system's a little cleaner.