F
FrustratedBeyondBelief
I have a PC that came with the MS-Office 2003 free trial pre-installed. The
trial has expired and we simply don't need it. (We have a legit copy of Word
that we'd like to use instead.)
As usual, the OEM selling the PC didn't provide a separate CD containing the
installer packages for all the gee-whiz crap they installed before they
shipped it -- all we got was the virtually useless *Recover CD* which was, of
course, just the hard drive's original image. (No way to selectively pick and
choose what we wanted to keep/remove.)
Every time we try to use Add/Remove Programs to uninstall the free trial,
the uninstaller hangs. No errors, no warnings, no nothing. Reboot required,
of course.
We purchased a legitimate MS-Word 2003 license, which is all we really need
on this PC. When we try to install it over the free trial, the installer
chokes. Again, no errors, no nothing -- we're forced to reboot mid-stream.
We've tried restoring the PC back to the beginning of time, but it doesn't
resolve the problem. In typical
get-it-out-the-door-don't-worry-if-it-works-or-not OEM fashion, the original
installation was apparently botched. And to make matters worse, the genius
who actually installed it decided that we really didn't need all those pesky
installation files laying around idle taking up hard drive space, so they're
missing as well.
My question is this: Does anyone know of a way to manually uninstall/remove
this free trial without having to reformat the hard drive and reinstall the
OS?
trial has expired and we simply don't need it. (We have a legit copy of Word
that we'd like to use instead.)
As usual, the OEM selling the PC didn't provide a separate CD containing the
installer packages for all the gee-whiz crap they installed before they
shipped it -- all we got was the virtually useless *Recover CD* which was, of
course, just the hard drive's original image. (No way to selectively pick and
choose what we wanted to keep/remove.)
Every time we try to use Add/Remove Programs to uninstall the free trial,
the uninstaller hangs. No errors, no warnings, no nothing. Reboot required,
of course.
We purchased a legitimate MS-Word 2003 license, which is all we really need
on this PC. When we try to install it over the free trial, the installer
chokes. Again, no errors, no nothing -- we're forced to reboot mid-stream.
We've tried restoring the PC back to the beginning of time, but it doesn't
resolve the problem. In typical
get-it-out-the-door-don't-worry-if-it-works-or-not OEM fashion, the original
installation was apparently botched. And to make matters worse, the genius
who actually installed it decided that we really didn't need all those pesky
installation files laying around idle taking up hard drive space, so they're
missing as well.
My question is this: Does anyone know of a way to manually uninstall/remove
this free trial without having to reformat the hard drive and reinstall the
OS?