I recently had a similar experience and broke down and bought the Office 2203
upgrade but I had to use my 2000 disk during the upgrade. It loaded buy
couldn't download the 03 updates needed after installation so MSFT tech
walked me through removing the remants of 2000 from my computer so the 03
updates would load. Trouble with that was that it remove Frontpage 2000 and
left my Frontpage upgrade uninstallable and they would not help me either. So
I found an old frontpage disk and installed it and then upgraded (cost me $30
on ebay). None of this happened from anything I did. I am starting to
suspect XP and Office auto updates cause more software conflicts and problems
than they fix.
I am through with microsoft after this round of upgrades. I am moving my 10
computer network to something else the next time my back office software
upgrades.