Office 2003 sp3 not installing?

[Linn Kubler]

Hi,

I was trying to apply sp3 to my system and got the error; "The expected
version was not found on your machine." Now when I look at Help | About in
any of my Office applications it says sp3 but when I run Office Update it
says it still needs to be installed. What gives?

After doing some research I am lead to suspect Office 2003 Web Components is
the source of the original error. I didn't install it from my Office CD's,
instead I downloaded it separately and installed it. Can it even be
installed from the CD's? I've never tried.

So is there any way I can update the web components separately from the
Office install or am I barking up the wrong tree here?

Thanks in advance,
Linn

 

[Doug Jessen]

Hi Linn,

You can extract the individual .MSP's to a folder by running the command:

Office2003SP3-kb923618-en-us.exe /c /t:C:\Office2003SP3\

and then apply the OWC11SP3.msp from the C:\Office2003SP3\ folder
separately.

Hope this helps,

Doug Jessen
Microsoft Corporation

 

[Linn Kubler]

Hi Doug,

I extracted the msp's from the distribution just fine, however, when I tried
to apply OWC11SP3.msp it gave me the following message:

The upgrade patch cannot be installed by the Windows Installer service
because the program to be upgraded may be missing, or the upgrade patch may
update a different version of the program. Verify that the program to be
upgraded exists on your computer and that you have the correct upgrade
patch.

Maybe I'm mistaken about the web components being the source of the problem.
Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Linn

 

[Doug Jessen]

In that case it seems that SP3 is partially installed but did not complete
so the Installer is confused. I would uninstall and reinstall Office 2003,
which of course will retain all the current settings, and then go directly
to SP3 Setup with a fresh, solid installation at RTM level.

Hopoe this helps,

Doug

 

[Doug Jessen]

Hi again Linn,

I am also wondering - was Office installed from an administrative share or
compressed source? If from an admin share, then possibly SP3 was already
applied to the admin source and the clients need to be recached. Trying to
update both the AIP and the clients separately will result in that error.
You may need to open a support incident. The last section of the SP3
article also provides information about this:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/923618

Regards,

Doug

 

[Linn Kubler]

Hmm... Well, Office was installed from an administrative installation point
but that was created a couple years ago and I know it has not been updated
to include sp3 because I would be the one to do it. Guess I'm not sure what
the caching feature is, how do you recache a client? My local service
provider warned me against slipstreaming updates and patches with the
administrative install. Don't recall exactly why they thought that was a
bad idea but I think it has something to do with stability.

Thanks,
Linn

 

[Doug Jessen]

Hi Linn,

If you have been applying previous Service Packs to the administrative
source, Microsoft recommends applying SP3 to the admin source and then
recaching the clients. For detailed procedures that explain how to update
an administrative image and how to update client computers, see the
"Updating clients from a patched administrative image" section in the
"Distributing Office 2003 product updates" topic at the following Microsoft
Web site:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/ork2003/HA011402381033.aspx

The client recache command is:

<path to admin share>\Setup.exe REINSTALL=all REINSTALLMODE=vomu /qb- /L*v
C:\Office2003sp3.txt

Hope this helps,

Doug Jessen
Microsoft

 

[Linn Kubler]

Thanks for the tips Doug. I broke down and let Windows Update go ahead and
install SP3 and that worked fine. Not sure why that worked but the
downloaded version didn't. I've since installed the downloaded copy to two
other computers without error. I will look at the articles you suggest and
see if it's practical for me to roll out the update that way rather than
visiting every computer.

Thanks much,
Linn