detect and repair setup failed office 2003

[karenS]

Have been trying to detect and repair for some time in office 2003 SP 2 -
each time it starts to run (very slowly) and about half way through it stops
with an error message Microsoft office Professional edition 2003 setup failed
-
Now for the life of me I cannot figure what the problem is - have restored
settings, system restore -
cannot do a detect and repair in Safe mode (or repair from the Add/remove
either) due to the error message I receive there as well - windows installer
cannot be accessed (due to safe mode)
Running XP Professional and up to date with updates..
Would appreciate any help..

 

[jawspike]

Karen,
I had a similar issue where I could't repair, remove or reinstall Office
2003 Pro.
I googled the message and found a KB 295823 which give a link to an MSI
cleanup tool.
I ran it to delete the MSI registered files for Office and was able to
reinstall it. It doesn't remove all of your settings if you reinstall it in
the same folders.
Hope this helps

 

[karenS]

Thanks Jawspike,
will check it out.. please tell me more about the tool and reinstall. How
do I make sure I don't lose docs and settings? Of course back up is
necessary, but just in case I got lazy or forget.. I really don't want to
deal with the hassle of having to reinstall, so does it just reinstall over
itself, and everything stays? Documents et All?

Thanks for responding so Quickly

 

[jawspike]

Karen,
When you install the program and then run it, it comes up with a list of
programs that were installed using the Microsoft MSI installer. Office is one
of those. If you use the tool to remove it, you will have to reinstall the
program but your documents don't get deleted. I also didn't have to set up my
Outlook accounts, etc. but the histories of last opened files were gone.
I haven't seen any major problems-I tried it before i posted just in case.
If I find any hiccups I will let you know.

 

[karenS]

Thanks, will do it this weekend and let you know what I find out...

 

[karenS]

One other question regarding reinstalling in the same folder, this may be a
duh, but do they just ask if you want to reinstall in same folder, or do you
have to direct it to the folder? if so, well, any advice?

 

[jawspike]

As long as you installed to the default directory originally, you don't have
to change anything on the re-install.

 

[Karen M]

thanks so much for your help jawspike.. seems that my problems got even worse
along the way, ontop of the detect and repair failing, I was unable to
download security updates.

After contacting Microsoft they did come up with a solution - Since I had
used the Windows Live Safety Center or OneCare to clean the registry keys,
this is what they recommended..

Go to C:\Documents and Settings\(user name)\Application Data\Windows Live
Safety Center\BackUp and double-click the .reg file created by the Microsoft
Safety registry cleanup.

So far this seems to have solved my problem - keeping this reply handy just
in case..

Thanks again for your help