Office Won't Update

[Grant]

Word 2002 froze up on me. MS bug report said I need some Office updates to
address the issue. When I tried to get updates, I was refused with this
message:

"Microsoft Word 2002:

Validation Incomplete: Office Must Be Activated
The validation process could not be completed because your copy of Microsoft
Office has not been activated.

Activate Office now
Start any Office application. The activation wizard will walk you through
the steps required to activate Office."

Word confirms that it has been activated and clicking on the "Activate
Product" section of "Microsoft Office Tools" in the start menu brings a box
that says that the product is already activated.

I don't se how I can get much more "activated" than this! I'm running
WinXP SP2.

Any suggestions?

Thanks...

 

[garfield-n-odie [MVP]]

See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/918004/ "Error message when you use
Office Genuine Advantage to validate Office 2003 or Office XP:
'Validation Incomplete' or 'Error code: 0x8018101'".

 

[Grant]

Thanks, garfield, but that page only seems to deal with getting a product
activated. The problem seems to be that this validation page is telling me
that my product is not activated, when I went through a successful activation
of the product only the day before! At least, one of the messages that I got
from the MS activation site said that the product was activated and both Word
and the "Activate Product" section of "Microsoft Office Tools" in the start
menu brings a box that says that the product is already activated.

I can't activate something that's already activated....Can I?

If it matters, the disk that was used to install Word 2002 was not a MS
Office disk, but MS Works 2005 disk. If it HAS to be a MS Office installation
for this process to work properly, am I just plain out of luck? And, if I
need updates for Word 2002 (the frozen app that started this wild party) why
would that depend on having the whole MS Office enchilada? Doesn't seem fair
to just slam the door in Word's face just because it didn't bring a date to
the party.

 

[garfield-n-odie [MVP]]

Sounds like you are reinstalling Works Suite 2005 to fix your "Word 2002
froze up on me" problem, and I think you're wasting your time because
reinstalling hardly ever fixes anything in Word 2002. But you've
already gone down that path, so you may as well apply the updates and
see what happens.

Sorry, I missed the part in your original post where you said Word was
already activated. This sounds like a corrupt license file problem.
Shut down Word 2002 if it is running. Use Windows Explorer or My
Computer to browse to the "C:\Documents and Settings\All
Users\Application Data\Microsoft\Office\Data" folder. As a precaution,
make a backup copy of the Data.dat file to another location on your hard
drive or to removable media. Delete the Data.dat file from the
....\Office\Data folder. But DO NOT delete the Data.bak file that should
be in the same folder. Start Word 2002, click on Help | Activate
Product, and follow the instructions in the Activation Wizard. Assuming
activation is successful, then try to get the updates again.

As for the "Word 2002 froze up on me" problem, that's kinda like calling
your mechanic on the phone and saying "my car froze up on me" and then
expecting your mechanic to know what's wrong with your car (did you run
out of gas? did you blow the engine? did you wrap the car around a
telephone pole? etc.)... way not enough information. If the updates
don't help, then you might try working through the troubleshooting steps
at http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/ProbsOpeningWord.htm .

 

[Grant]

Garfield! You da Man!

I deleted that file, activated again, and now the product validation goes
through!

As a result, MS gave me a truly mind-boggling array of updates.

It was never my intention to get an answer from this forum as to why Word
froze up initially. The error report I sent to MS said that the cause could
likely be rectified by installing Office updates. I wanted to find out why MS
was disallowing the updates when I went to get them. So, now that issue's
laid to rest.

Here's wishing Garfield some happy endings of his own!

Grant