Weird reinstall problem

[Invisible]

Hi folks.

The other day I received a simple request: a user's PC doesn't have MS
Access on it, and he needs it. OK, simple enough...

...except that this is a PC we got from our other site, and we don't actually
have the CD for it. It's Office 2000 Pro installed on Windows 2000 Pro
(SP3). When I put our Office 2000 Pro CD in, the first thing it asked me is
if I want to "update" it. (I presume because our CD has Office SR-1 on
it...) After a while, it came back with "Cannot access file D:\OFFICE1.CAB -
make sure the file exists and you have permission to access it. [Retry]
[Abort]"

Well obviously the file exists - it's sat right there on the CD! And AFAIK,
the CD filesystem doesn't *have* permissions...

So anyway... I presumed this was some weird error due to the wrong product
key or something. So I simply uninstalled the entire Office suite (which
took ages, by the way - this PC seems unreasonably slow for some reason...)
On attempting to reinstall, I got precisely the same error message! *sigh*

So someone suggested to me that I try installing Office 97 instead. (This is
what most of our users have - only a few have 2000.) This I did - and it
installed perfectly. No problems.

Erm... that is... no problems until after I left and the guy tried to
actually *use* it! Access won't open - "Access cannot start because there is
no license installed for it on this computer." Erm... huh?! You what?? Also,
Word now does various strange things - eg, when you try to print, it says
something about you not having permission or something, and then gives you a
"Save As..." box. And when you quite Word, it gives you that "Normal.dot has
changed, do you want to save changes?" Erm... well *we* didn't change it!

Excel seems to work tho! (Maybe...)

To summarise: I took a machine with Word & Excel 2000 working perfectly...
and transformed it into a PC with Word, Excel & Acces 97, not working
terribly well at all...

Help!!

I have no idea why all this stuff is going wrong... After installing Office
97, I did update it to SR-2b... but I did that on my PC too, and it works
just fine. I have to admit, I installed it, it installed fine, and I just
assumed it would work properly. It always has before... heh.

Thanks.

 

[Invisible]

I do not see a question regarding a "Word problem" in your original post.

It's a bit vague I know... if I can't find a solution, I guess I can always
reinstall Windows. (As I said, this PC is from another site, so it's
probably had all sorts of crazy software loaded on it... Add/Remove Programs
lists such wonders as "DigiSim 4.3" and "Bubble Bobble Ultima" which won't
uninstall.) Maybe reinstalling will give me a system that works properly...

If this is something simple to fix, I'd like to know. If not, I'll try and
get more exact details. And then if no one has an answer, I'll reformat!

Thanks.

 

[Cheryl Fischer]

Sorry, I *did* miss that! I do agree that you may want to "clean up" this
computer. Games that cannot be un-installed would make me very nervous.

Here are a couple of other possibilities:

1. Make sure that all Service Releases for Office 97 are installed.
2. Check Tools -> Options -> Save -> [] Prompt to save Normal.dot. This
can be turned off.
3. Does this particular computer have virus-scanning software on it with
up-to-date virus definitions? If not, I would install and/or update the
virus-checking software and scan, as the problem could be a Word macro
virus. If I remember correctly, one of the quick ways to determine if there
is such a virus on the computer is to open the Word Tools menu. If there is
no "Options" menu item present, then the possibility of a macro virus is
strong.

 

[Invisible]

Sorry, I *did* miss that!

Not a problem ;-)

I do agree that you may want to "clean up" this
computer. Games that cannot be un-installed would make me very nervous.

It says something about "Cannot find install.log". I strongly suspect the
(non-IT) people who had this computer just deleted the installation
directory and all the shortcuts to it - with the result that the registry
still thinks it's installed! But anyway, that's another story...

Here are a couple of other possibilities:

1. Make sure that all Service Releases for Office 97 are installed.

As I said above, I installed SR-2b... is that the latest?

2. Check Tools -> Options -> Save -> [] Prompt to save Normal.dot. This
can be turned off.

Right - I'll check.

3. Does this particular computer have virus-scanning software on it with
up-to-date virus definitions? If not, I would install and/or update the
virus-checking software and scan, as the problem could be a Word macro
virus. If I remember correctly, one of the quick ways to determine if there
is such a virus on the computer is to open the Word Tools menu. If there is
no "Options" menu item present, then the possibility of a macro virus is
strong.

Yes - we have McAfee VirusScan with the 4.2.40 scanning engine and the 4282
DAT file (= 1 August, 2003).

Just out of curiosity... wouldn't uninstalling Word tend to eliminate Word
macro viruses? Most of these things pop themselves into the startup
directory or the Normal.dot template don't they? Presumably these were
deleted when I uninstalled Word...

Anyway, I'll try the settings you suggested and see what happens.

Thanks.