office works okay as admin but re-loads each time w/user profiles

[alethea]

Each time I try to open an Office (2003 or XP) program as a USER (XPsp3 OS)
the program "loads" popping up various windows but then finally seems to
work.

One of the windows says the stdole32.tlb is corrupt or does not exist please
run setup again. This does not happen when logged in as ADMIN.

I have tried uninstalling, reinstalling, changing permissions in the
registry (even though that fix applied to NT and 2000) and using Windows
Installer Cleanup utility all to no avail.

Historically, I installed Office XP and uninstalled it and then installed
Office 2003 before I noticed the problem.

I am setting up a fresh virtual machine to determine if a clean XP install
with a clean Office XP or 2003 install will solve the problem. If that
doesn't work I will resort to a clean install on a "real" (as opposed to
virtual) machine and see if that works.

 

[alethea]

update:
Built virtual XP machine and installed Office 2003 as planned.

Un-installed Office 2003 as planned.

Re-installed Office 2003 as planned.

Result--everything worked fine for admin and user, no reloading of program
each time user opens it.

Does this mean that I have to do a clean install of XP SP3 and all my
programs? This is a nightmare.
There must be someone somewhere out there who knows what is happening to
cause this problem and hopefully has some easier way of fixing it than
starting all over from scratch.

PS not interested in using some crazy shareware or freeware that will load
who knows what else on my system. am interested in cleanest, purest way to
solve the problem.

 

[alethea]

Finally, after a month of struggling with this problem I found what I think
was the issue in my case. I was using a Home Use version(s) of MS Office and
even though I had uninstalled them I think they weren't fully uninstalled.
The cure was unbearable but since I didn't want to clutter up my system with
a bunch of other software, I did a clean install of Windows XP SP3 and when I
installed (only one of the Office HU versions!) I didn't activate it as an
admin (I was afraid this would create the issue again) I logged in as user
and activated it as my user account.
Now that I suspect the issue is the result of the Home Use Program, it
creates a whole new issue, How does one completely unistall these programs in
such a way as to be able to use the next version when it comes out?