Office 2003 installation problem - not a valid Win32 application

[Trent C]

A colleague is having problems installing Office 2003 on her machine. My
understanding is that it's a WinXP PC with all the updates.

She had a hooky copy of Office 2003 Professional for several years which the
MS Authentication Tool recently picked up, so she bought an OEM copy of
Office Pro, uninstalled the existing installation, then tried reinstalling
it from the brand new, sealed OEM disk. Unfortunately, as soon as she's
entered the product key, she gets the message "Not a valid Win32
application" and the setup ceases.

The CD is clean and the CD driver works with other application CDs, so I
don't think it's the hardware. Is it possible that an OEM copy of Office
that was produced for one computer manufacturer wouldn't work on another
manufacturer's PC?

My next step is to suggest that she tries copying the files onto her hard
drive and try from there, but I'd be grateful to know whether there are any
known issues, or if she's not doing something obvious.

Thanks in advance,

Trent

 

[DL]

"Not a valid Win32 application" is usually an indication of a win problem
Is any anti virus disabled?, installing from an account with Admin rights?

 

[Trent C]

I'll certainly pass that on but I have a suspicion that since this is a
standalone machine sued by only one person, there is only one user account
set up, so it's probably not an admin issue. That said, the AV option is
definitely worth a try...