Resolved Has Microsoft ******* up my computer AGAIN!?

When I booted up this morning, Microsoft update service had 5 suggested updates waiting. I looked over the titles and they seemed genuine, so I completed the update.

A couple of hours later, I went to use Word 2003 and got a message that it had developed a problem that caused it to shut down incorrectly last time. It suggested running it in safe mode, which I did and it worked OK.

Whenever I try to use it in normal mode it blows up. One of the options in safe mode was a repair, which I triggered. It required the original source disk, which I ran and it came up and said "it's fixed ". Guess what - it still wouldn't run except in Safe mode.

My next step is to re-install the whole Office 2003 and see if I can get it back, but after a few glasses of Trebbiano, I'll leave that until tomorrow morning. Has anyone been bitten by these latest updates to XP and IE8?

Maybe I'll revert to IE7 again and try to restore to before the updates. One of them said it couldn't be removed once it had been installed - that one bothers me. Maybe it's time to ignore ALL MS updates to XP SP3?

 

This afternoon, I removed Office 2003 and then re-installed it from the original disk. Yeah, Word was working again. Of course, MS Update was ticked off because the items it had installed were no longer there.

I foolishly allowed a re-installation of the five updates, and Word was blown out of the water again. The same diagnostic message appeared and Word would only load in "Safe" mode.

Don't the idiots at Microsoft test these updates before letting them loose on the world? Now I've got to remove and re-install Office 2003 again and then check the updates one by one to determine which update is causing the problem. System restore won't fly because at least one of the updates is non-removeable.

What a PITA! Maybe it's time to give up on Microsoft altogether and go Apple!

 

That service pack was one of the 5 updates, Tony. It's not just Word that's been messed up. The only program in Office that runs correctly is the spreadsheet.

I'm going to uninstall again this morning and start over. I'll install the Service Pack by itself first, then the others one-by-one to see which one causes the glitch.

 

Tony:

I removed Office 2003, cleaned up the registry and re-installed it. Everything was working fine after the re-installation. Auto update flagged that Office 2003 Srvice Pack 3 was available.

I installed it, and everything except Excel is dead, again. Control Panel add/remove says Office 2003 SP3 cannot be removed. System Restore won't go back either.

I will attempt to remove the entire Office 2003 again and reinstall. What a PITA!

 

Office 2003 successfully re-installed, just Excel, Word, Powerpoint and Outlook this time. All are working fine, and I'm not going to accept any more Office updates.

I was a bit surprised to see that, a few months back, a Service pack and a bunch of updates to Office 2007 had been installed. Since I don't have Office 2007, I can't understand why they were even suggested. Unfortunately they're not removable through Control Panel either. I get that message about the "Patch package not being recognized ".

I'll dig back and see if I can find the old post on that subject in the next few days.

 

Tony, I agree whole-heartedly. I'm not going to mess about with any more Office 2003 updates. I'll just take my lumps if I get any viri. Most of the folks I deal with are in my wife's knitting group or Boeing retirees like me, so I'm not going to sweat the details.

I may get serious about updating to Windws 7 sometime this year, but the cost of updating all the other programs is a bit discouraging. Being retired, I don't have $600 or so to spend on Office 2007, Quicken 2010 and all the other stuff.

I need to evaluate my desktop and SWMBO's net book to see if any hardware needs to change to run W7. I get the impression that W7 is a pretty good program from the viewpoints of stability and security.

Comments?

 

BTW, I am going to pulse the official Microsoft support guys to see if any other users are reporting problems with this particular service pack. I do also have a problem with my Lexmark all-in-one printer refusing to confirm that it has the necessary language capabilities to satisfy Microsoft.

My computer has sent at least 10 trouble reports on the issue with the Service Pack blowing Word out of the water! I figure the more of those they get in Redmond, the more chance there is that they'll realize there's a problem.

I'm close enough, geographically, (about 70 miles) to go down there and pound on a few desks!

 

Son-in-law was over this week and waved his magic wand. Problems with MSWord going belly up are solved and I've got full capability back on my Lexmark All-in-one printer.

I think the Lexmark problem was self-inflicted. When I was looking things over after the first installation, I saw all the odd-ball foreign language character sets (Cyrillic, Arabic, etc.) taking up space. Since I couldn't conceive ever using them, I deleted the files.

I think the printer then looked back at Word and said "you've got all these languages in there that I don't have data to support" and shut off some of the features of the printer.

I'm still going to be very cautious about Microsoft Updates.