Resolved MS Office 2003 and Windows Installer problems

This is a follow-up to my earlier post about MSWord playing silly buggers.

I did a "restore undo" to get back to where I was yesterday afternoon (I thought). I now have other problems.

I tried to remove Office 2003, using Control Panel Add/Remove programs. I was planning a new installation (again) of Office 03. This time, I got a diagnostic about Windows Installer, saying "This patch package could not be opened. Verify that it exists and that you can access it, or contact the application vendor to verify that it is a valid Windows Installer patch ".

It gave me no program identifiers so I could go look for this mysterious patch and none of the various "fix-it" programs have anything about it.

I did download Windows Installer 4.5, just in case I was behind the times, but that didn't help.

Word is still not allowing normal operation. When I try to start it, I get the message "Word failed to start correctly last time. Starting in "Safe Mode" will help you correct or isaloate a start-up problem. Do you want to start in safe Mode?"

If I say yes it goes into safe mode, but when I interrogate the various potential problems, there are none listed. If I say "no" , I then get a message "Word has encountered a problem and must close ". There's a clickable box to try and recover. That gets you back to the "Word has encountered . . " message. Leaving it blank goes back to the desktop with no further action.

I'm also getting a message thet there's a fault on the "Printer Card Transfer Monitor ", of whose purpose I haven't a clue.

I spent the best part of the day fighting this SOB. Any ideas would be gratefully received.

 

I always take error messages as a guide and try to look behind what they are saying to the basic cause.

I am not going to be able to give you any steps as to how to fix it. It seems to go back before this thread (I suppose I could search for that thread, but you seem to think this is a different problem and so you made a new thread).

Would using a System Restore help?

Look at what might be similar. Do you have any other office-type programs installed?

You should be able to uninstall and reinstall the Windows Installer (look in Add or Remove Programs), try that.

I have come across the "Windows Installer Cleanup Utility ", have you seen it?

Can you think why MS Office might not like installing on your system?

Just some suggestions.

Matt

 

The installer cleanup utility allowed me to delete the scrambled Office 2003 and I was able to restore it successfully. Thanks for the help. Boy could you do a power of no good with that thing!

The Printer card monitor thing is still there, but doesn't seem to be screwing anything up at this point..