I can't install service pack 3 or open excel

[karenh]

I would be very grateful if someone can help get my office back up and
running. I'm running office XP professional. I can't open excel as it comes
up with windows installer and says it needs the cd roms but office came
pre-installed on my laptop so I don't have any discs. I thought installing
SP3 may fix it but I can't install SP3 because it starts windows installer as
well. What can I do to try and get things sorted. Thanks.

 

[Tom Pepper Willett]

You'll need the cd. Contact the person/company that sold you the pc with it
pre-installed.

Tom
|I would be very grateful if someone can help get my office back up and
| running. I'm running office XP professional. I can't open excel as it
comes
| up with windows installer and says it needs the cd roms but office came
| pre-installed on my laptop so I don't have any discs. I thought installing
| SP3 may fix it but I can't install SP3 because it starts windows installer
as
| well. What can I do to try and get things sorted. Thanks.

 

[Steve H]

Dear Karen,

In an earlier string 'Ramos' wrote of a similar problem to yours, and I
added a note rather late in that discussion which might be of use to you. I
too have a pc which came with office installed and no discs, and had the
same trouble with the unhelpful 'updates'. However, these failed updates
seemed almost always to result in the loss of Excel, which we had to get
round by opening the .exe file from an earlier version directly and ignoring
the message to update.

As it turned out, close inspection of various event logs informed me that
the failure of Excel occurred when a file called XLStart could not be found.
I was then pleased to find as I said to Ramon:

"Inspection of the Event Log gleaned the information that Excel failed to
find 'XLStart', and it turned out that simply adding an XLStart folder to
the Office\ and Office10\ folders list, immediately created the personal
XLStart folders for each user, and enabled Excel to update to SP3 with the
other programmes.

Having said this, running the Office Update from scratch still gets stuck at
'where's PRO.MSI', but at least the major components now seem to be
working."

You may find this work around helps you too.

Regards,
SteveH