Outlook quit & won't reinstall

[coleco via OfficeKB.com]

A couple of months before my entire computer crashed, Outlook stopped working.
With help from some friends, I was able to get it working again only to find
I had lost all contact info and files from before. Since I've been
unemployed for over 6 months, I needed to keep a record of jobs I was
applying for which was in one of the folders.

Then the computer crashed and my son reinstalled and reloaded everything.
Although Microsoft Office reloaded just fine, to run anything including
Outlook, it's asking for the Product Key which I am using the one that goes
with this version of office that is on the back of the holder for the
Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003 which is yes--the same one that
was originally on it. I have tried the Product key 5 times and my son has
tried it a couple of times. So the O versus 0 is not an issue.

I can't afford the Microsoft fees to find out what to do--has anybody else
had this problem and were you able to fix it?

 

[DL]

You need to find the cause of these crashes first.
Test memory, www.memtest.org and test your hard drive, your HD manufacturer
supplies a free testing utility

You might also be advised to backup up data, your Outlook data is contained
within *.pst files, which are hidden file
With Outlook closed you simply copy the pst files to external media