"This patch package could not be opened" solution

P

Paul E

I came here today after searching the MS KB also. In both locations I found
reference to problems with MS Office XP applications crashing on start-up
with the error:

"This patch package could not be opened. Verify that the patch package
exists and that you can access it, or contact the application vendor to
verify that this is a valid Windows Installer patch package."

What I did not find was the solution.

When I was booting, Excel would try to load, ask if it should load in Safe
Mode, and crash no matter what I answered. I would try to start word, get
the error message and it also would crash despite apparently attempting to
run a repair. I could not uninstall Office, I could not Repair it.

The solution from a very helpful chap at MS Tech Support is as follows: (and
presuming you know how to back-up and/or edit your registry with great care)

a) Start | Run, enter Regedit into the box.
b) Highlight the My Computer at the very top of the Registry listing.
c) Control-F to start the Search routine
d) In "Find What", enter the word "Patches" (without quotes)
e) Check the "Keys" and the "Match whole string only" boxes, do NOT check
Values or Data; and click Find
f) When it finds the first one, right-click it and choose "Rename" and
rename it to OLDPatches
g) Now hit enter and press F3 to search for the next one.
h) Be patient, you should end up finding about 3-6 of them. Rename them all
to OLDPatches
i) Then, exit Regedit.
j) Turn off your virus protection
k) Put your Office XP CD in the CD drive
l) Open your Office applications like Excel and Word
m) They should load properly after brief updating
n) Turn your virus protection back on (of course!)

The above took me less than 5 minutes and worked flawlessly.

I hope some people will find this helpful. I am no pro at this so "use at
your own risk".

Paul
 
G

Guest

I agree this is one way to fix the error message
although you should still run a repair of Office to
restore a good backup copy of office to the windows
registy and reinstall the Office updates.

Additionally, this error depends on which version of
Windows you are running such as Windows 2000 Pro this
error most commonly occurs after installing windows 2000
SP-3. The reason is because The update of the windows
installer service will break office applications due to
the windows installer does not migrate the information in
the Windows registry as expected. This issue is supposed
to be fixed in Windows 2000 SP-4 update.

Another workaround before installing windows 2000 updates
is to first update the windows installer to 2.0 the
information will be correctly be migrated in the registry
for office. If the error happens after installing windows
2000 updates then a quick workaround is to run the
Migration command and restart windows. The system will
take a few minutes longer to reboot but well worth
avoiding hacking the registry for novice users.


Here are a few links to related knowledge base articles.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-
us;812490
Error Message: 1635 This Patch Package Could Not Be Opened

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-
us;295823
OFF: Error Message: This Patch Package Could Not Be
Opened
 

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