Change in drive configuration breaks Office updates

[JeffS]

I think this is a bug:

Windows XP Pro, SP2, all updates.
Office 2003 Pro, all updates prior to May 2007.

I have a big hard drive, with several partitions, for years. I combined
content from the last two paritions, removed the last partition, and resized,
to combine the free space. So, I have one less partition. I used to have an
M: drive, now I don't.

After this drive configuration change, the Office updates in May 2007 fail
to apply. Downloading and running them manually exposes an error message
that says "Invalid drive M:".

I tried tricks like using Subst and MountVol to map M: to a folder on an
existing drive, to no avail.

I resorted to shrinking my last partition just enough to make a small M:
partition, and now the Office updates apply successfully.

Very lame. It's not like I ever had any Office components, or even
documents, stored on the M: drive. It seems like Office software (including
updates) should only care about the System drive, the drive Office is
installed on, any drives I ask Office apps to open/save files to, and perhaps
any drive I installed Office components from.

This was a pain in the ass to figure out and work around.

JeffS

 

[Jerry]

You could have searched the registry for any references to M:\ and deleted
or renamed them as appropriate.