Microsoft Genuine Advantage issue?

[Craig]

I've got a strange Outlook issue that started after an update brought
down 'Microsoft Genuine Advantage' for Office. I've got Office 2003
Professional on Vista Home Premium (32bit) that's been running just
fine for months. Yesterday, Vista decided to download this Office
'update' and it did it for both Office 2003 *and* 2007 - no idea why
it threw 2007 into the mix other than I may have run and uninstalled a
trial version of it for a moment or two back when I first built the
machine, but I think that is where things are going wrong.

The next time I went into Outlook, it started but I got a lovely
dialogue box telling me that "This copy of Microsoft Office has not
been activated. Please excuse this interruption. Microsoft Office must
be activated before validation can determine that Office is genuine."
and when I clicked on 'Learn More' it basically tried to be helpful
and explain to me why the validation check had failed and to either
activate or uninstall Office. Of course, when I try to activate
Outlook it tells me 'This product has already been activated'. Which
leads me to believe it is complaining about some stub of Office 2007.
I tried uninstalling the 2007 updates but all that did was cause the
'must be activated' rodeo to roll through town one more time. Doing a
'repair' from inside 2003 didn't help either.

I would happily ignore all this but what's changed is that I can no
longer exit cleanly from Outlook. When I close it, it stays in the
System Tray and emails keep popping in until I kill the process. If I
right-click on the tray icon and select 'Open Outlook' nothing
happens, I need to go back to the menu and launch it again to get back
in. And kill the process when I'm done.

Help?

 

[Roady [MVP]]

The best way to go against it at this stage is to completely remove all
Office 2007 and Office 2003 applications/components from your computer via
Control Panel-> Uninstall a Program

After this, install Office 2003 again, SP3 for Office 2003 and additional
updates. Start an Office application and activate it.

The OGA tool sometimes gets confused when there was first a trial installed,
then Office 2003, then the Office 2007 Compatibility Update for previous
versions of Office and then removing the Office 2007 trial. There are other
situations as well, but on this one I got a repro myself for 2 out of 3
times some time ago. I haven't tried it with the latest updates and latest
version of OGA but I assume it has not been solved yet.

 

[Craig]

I've got a strange Outlook issue that started after an update brought
down 'Microsoft Genuine Advantage' for Office. I've got Office 2003
Professional on Vista Home Premium (32bit) that's been running just
fine for months. Yesterday, Vista decided to download this Office
'update' and it did it for both Office 2003 *and* 2007 - no idea why
it threw 2007 into the mix other than I may have run and uninstalled a
trial version of it for a moment or two back when I first built the
machine, but I think that is where things are going wrong.

The next time I went into Outlook, it started but I got a lovely
dialogue box telling me that "This copy of Microsoft Office has not
been activated. Please excuse this interruption. Microsoft Office must
be activated before validation can determine that Office is genuine."
and when I clicked on 'Learn More' it basically tried to be helpful
and explain to me why the validation check had failed and to either
activate or uninstall Office. Of course, when I try to activate
Outlook it tells me 'This product has already been activated'. Which
leads me to believe it is complaining about some stub of Office 2007.
I tried uninstalling the 2007 updates but all that did was cause the
'must be activated' rodeo to roll through town one more time. Doing a
'repair' from inside 2003 didn't help either.

I would happily ignore all this but what's changed is that I can no
longer exit cleanly from Outlook. When I close it, it stays in the
System Tray and emails keep popping in until I kill the process. If I
right-click on the tray icon and select 'Open Outlook' nothing
happens, I need to go back to the menu and launch it again to get back
in. And kill the process when I'm done.

Help?

Looks like the reason for the Office 2007 updates were because I have
the Microsoft Office Compatability Pack installed. Regardless, the
latest update to MGA seems to have triggered something so that Office
will no long close properly. Not much luck finding a solution googling
around so that was why I came here.

 

[Craig]

The best way to go against it at this stage is to completely remove all
Office 2007 and Office 2003 applications/components from your computer via
Control Panel-> Uninstall a Program

After this, install Office 2003 again, SP3 for Office 2003 and additional
updates. Start an Office application and activate it.

The OGA tool sometimes gets confused when there was first a trial installed,
then Office 2003, then the Office 2007 Compatibility Update for previous
versions of Office and then removing the Office 2007 trial. There are other
situations as well, but on this one I got a repro myself for 2 out of 3
times some time ago. I haven't tried it with the latest updates and latest
version of OGA but I assume it has not been solved yet.

Will uninstalling leave my existing pst and archived emails intact and
accessable such that, when I reinstall, I can (fairly easily) get
everything back or hooked back in again? Is there information
(accounts and rules and such) I can export so I don't have to set
everything back up again from scratch?

 

[Roady [MVP]]

Yes, that will leave your configuration intact. It never hurts making a
backup of course ;-)
For that see;
http://www.howto-outlook.com/howto/backupandrestore.htm



-----

 

[tedwill1959]

What I have done in the past with this same problem is,
1: Start>control panel>folders>View and "click on-show hidden files, folders
and drives" also uncheck the box labeled "Hide protected operating system
files" and click on apply
2: close out of your control panel and open up your windows explorer
directory (start>programs>accessories>windows explorer)
3: from your c: drive, openup each folder to find any references to Office
Genuine advantage and delete it out
4: close out windows explorer and go to Start>Run: type in regedit and OK:
5: click once on "computer" (to hi-lite)
6: go to your tool bar and click on Edit>Find and type in in Office Genuine
Advntage and click on Find.
7: when Office Genuine Advantage is found then delete it out.
8: press your F3 key to find your next point of referrence to OGA. Continue
this process until you receive a message that tells you that you have
completed searching your registry
9: close out of the registry and open your control
panel>folders>View>restore defaults and reboot your system

 

[VanguardLH]

What I have done in the past ...

Too bad you didn't reply in the past when Craig asked for help. You
thought Craig was still monitoring that year-old post? Notice the
timestamp for his post. Almost a year ago. Considering the retention
times for many NNTP servers, his old thread may not even be available to
other Usenetters.