Resolved MS Office 2010 Upgrade post-install problems

I have been running MS Office 2003 on my desktop for some time and finally decided to bite the bullet and go for Office 2010. I run Windows Vista x64 business edition with keep current with MS patches.

I installed "Office Home and Business 2010" edition in UPGRADE mode. All works fine on the [admin] account I used to install it - it opens my Outlook mail file without issue .

However on my standard user account where I usually open Outlook to deal with all my emails, Outlook 2010 refuses to launch . Excel, Word, PowerPoint and OneNote 2010 all work fine .. the problem is just with Outlook.

The text in the error message I get is
"Cannot start Microsoft Outlook. MAPI32.DLL is corrupt or the wrong version. This could have been caused by installing other messaging software. Please reinstall Outlook. ". Then outlook hangs and Windows asks if I want to Close it or wait to see if it responds.

Seeing I don't store files in the mail account signon, I deleted the userid and recreated it to get a clean environment. Still get the same error message!

I checked on another std user signon I have - same error message from Outlook but all the other products work.

Couldn't find anything useful on MS website or the web (maybe I need to figure a better search?).

Does anyone have any ideas what's gone wrong, and how I might fix it? I'm hoping I don't need to de-install (restart, then) re-install Office 2010.

I have noticed that in Add/Remove Pgms Office 2003 is still listed. Maybe it's as simple as doing a "Remove" on this, not sure so thought I'd solicit views first. I would have expected by taking the "Upgrade" path all 2003 components would have *gone*.

Interestingly, "MS Office Home and Business 2010" is listed as Installed On 11/09/2010 (909MB). I know I installed Office 2003 way back on 3rd April 2009 when the machine was purchased so not sure why "MS Office Professional Edition 2003" found immediately below it is reporting as 13/08/2010 (& no size shown).

Under C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office I have three directories - OFFICE11 (=2003), Office12(?), and Office14 (=2010).


Any help much appreciated !!

 

So much for choosing "upgrade" then. I'll take out the lot. Hopefully a complete removal of Office 2003 & anything associated + Office 2010 followed by a reinstall from scratch *might* work. Hope the (office part of the) registry is not *******. I may throw a regclean in between.

 

I removed the two pre-2010 components still installed and then "repaired" 2010. Then [only after] I ran a Regclean 2010 seems Outlook 2010 is working okay. Have one other unrelated query now (which I'll post separately).