Office 2003 Installer Error

[Peggy A]

I am working with a client who had a very strange thing occur on her
computer. She seems to have lost most of the executable files for Office and
her I.E. 7 wasn't working correctly. She is running Windows XP Pro SP3. I
have gotten I.E. to function correctly by reregistering vbscript, as well as
running anti-virus and anti-spyware software and running ccleaner and
advanced system care to clean up the system overall. She has 2 copies of the
Office 2003 Small Business Edition CDs. I tried to reinstall Office using
these CDs, but for both, after copying a few files to the PC, I get the
message"Windows Installer - The system administrator has set policies to
prevent this installation." The user we were logged in under has
administrator rights. I tried to do the "run as administrator" option, with
the same results. I checked for any policies under Control
Panel/Administrative Tools/Local Security Policy but didn't see anything
there that should be a problem. I had successfully been able to install other
software, though not via an installation CD. That was through running a
downloaded install program.

I'm at a loss as to what to do next. We've been trying to avoid having to
reinstall Windows. Would it be worthwhile setting up a new administrative
user and trying to install it as that user? Should I uninstall Office first
and try again? Any other thoughts or suggestions?

Thanks.

 

[Mary Sauer]

See:
Description of the Windows Installer CleanUp Utility
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290301

Be certain to have your product number handy if you decide to use this utility.

 

[Peggy A]

Unfortunately, when we run the Installer CleanUp Utility, MS Office is not
listed, so we can't select it to run the utility on. Any other thoughts?
Though I hate to edit the registry, are there particular registry entries
that it would make sense to delete?

Thanks!
--
Peggy A.
In A Chord Web Design and Consulting

See:
Description of the Windows Installer CleanUp Utility
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290301

Be certain to have your product number handy if you decide to use this utility.

 

[Mary Sauer]

Are you saying Office 2003 was not listed in the CleanUp utility?

Try the steps in this article.
"The Windows Installer service could not be accessed" error message when you try
to install Office
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/324516/en-us
--
Mary Sauer
http://msauer.mvps.org/

Unfortunately, when we run the Installer CleanUp Utility, MS Office is not
listed, so we can't select it to run the utility on. Any other thoughts?
Though I hate to edit the registry, are there particular registry entries
that it would make sense to delete?

Thanks!

 

[Peggy A]

Yes, that is correct. Office 2003 is not listed in the CleanUp utility. I
will try the steps in the article as soon as I get a chance. I've seen some
postings elsewhere indicating that it is helpful to unregister msiexec and
then re-register it by running the following:

msiexec/unregister
misexec/regserver

This computer had some sort of virus or something that had caused vbscript
to stop working and when I re-registered it, it started working again. Do you
think this could be a similar problem?

Thanks!

 

[Peggy A]

As you can guess from my reply, I didn't read the article you provided the
link to before posting. Sounds like exactly what I was reading elsewhere. I
will give that a try.

Thanks again!

 

[Peggy A]

I tried unregistering and reregistering the Windows Installer and we stoll
got the same error message when trying to install Office 2003 Small Business
Edition. Any other ideas or am I stuck with doing a repair install of Windows?

Thanks.