Office XP Reinstalls after Reboot

[Michael Ledford]

About a year ago, we had a 19 year old IT guy working for us, and he
installed Office XP on seven workstations across the company. Recently we
discovered that our Office XP installs were pirated, and we bought some
Office 2003 licenses to correct the problem.

However, no matter what I try, Office XP reinstalls itself after reboot.
I've tried removing it through the Office 2003 installation wizard, through
the control panel, by running the Office Clean utility that came with Office
2003, using the Windows Install Cleanup Utility, and nothing works!

I'm by no means a computer pro, but I have the funny feeling something in my
registry was either corrupted or manually changed by the shady IT guy to
force it to take the cracked copy of Office XP. Any ideas on how I could
proceed?

 

[XS11E]

About a year ago, we had a 19 year old IT guy working for us, and
he installed Office XP on seven workstations across the company.
Recently we discovered that our Office XP installs were pirated,
and we bought some Office 2003 licenses to correct the problem.

However, no matter what I try, Office XP reinstalls itself after
reboot. I've tried removing it through the Office 2003
installation wizard, through the control panel, by running the
Office Clean utility that came with Office 2003, using the Windows
Install Cleanup Utility, and nothing works!

I'm by no means a computer pro, but I have the funny feeling
something in my registry was either corrupted or manually changed
by the shady IT guy to force it to take the cracked copy of Office
XP. Any ideas on how I could proceed?

I'm sure it's the server that's trying to re-install Office XP, tell
your IT guy what's happening and let him fix it, that's what he's being
paid to do.

 

[Michael Ledford]

Sadly, we no longer HAVE an IT guy to got to, and I'm stuck trying to pick up
the pieces (although I have brought in a professional to look at it, and
after $400.00 he couldn't tell me what was wrong).

I wasn't aware that the server could be redeploying Office. How would I check?

 

[XS11E]

Sadly, we no longer HAVE an IT guy to got to, and I'm stuck trying
to pick up the pieces (although I have brought in a professional
to look at it, and after $400.00 he couldn't tell me what was
wrong).

I wasn't aware that the server could be redeploying Office. How
would I check?

Sorry, I don't know but someone here does so keep watching...

 

[Michael Ledford]

I just wanted to say thank you so much - I've posted this problem at maybe
eight different sites, and you were the only person who could point me in the
right direction.

It turns out that the server WAS deploying Office XP. Every time we logged
onto the network, Office XP shortcuts were being installed on our
workstations and overriding our Office 2003 install. I called in a
professional IT consultant to look at what we found, and he went about making
changes.

Unfortunately, he uninstalled (actually, just deleted) Office XP on the
server BEFORE uninstalling them on the desktops, so now they're not
uninstalling properly at all... I imagine the answer is to replace the Office
XP custom installation that was originally on the server, THEN uninstall on
the desktops, THEN uninstall from the server itself.

Again, thank you. Hundreds of dollars of professional consultants and a bad
IT employee later, it was finally mad Google searches and Microsoft forums
that got me patched up.

-Mike

 

[XS11E]

I just wanted to say thank you so much

You're welcome, I wish I could have helped more...