Hi, MissJoyful. Hmmm... you don't sound very joyful. In case your
question is not rhetorical, the following is quoted from a Microsoft
article about Office 2000, although the reasons generally apply to all
versions of Office:
The SR-1/SR-1a Update requires access to your original Office 2000 CD
for the following reasons:
• The Windows Installer preserves the integrity of your Office 2000
installation by "melding" the SR-1/SR-1a Update with your current
installation of Office 2000. The SR-1/SR-1a Update uses the Windows
Installer both to reinstall Office 2000 from your original CD and
simultaneously to update your Office 2000 files to the SR-1/SR-1a level.
Because of the design of this feature, Office 2000 seamlessly uses
SR-1/SR-1a files when you add, remove, or reinstall Office 2000
components later.
• Performing a reinstallation of Office 2000 while installing the
SR-1/SR-1a Update ensures that your installation of Office 2000 is in
good working order. This helps to ensure that any potential Office
2000-related problems (for example, missing files or registry entries)
are eliminated as a result of installing the SR-1a Update.
• Because there have been several updates to Office 2000 since it
was initially released, if the SR-1/SR-1a Update did not require access
to the original Office 2000 CD, it would have to update every version of
every Office 2000 file that was released prior to SR-1a. This would
greatly increase the size of the SR-1/SR-1a Update. In order to keep
the size of the SR-1/SR-1a Update as small as possible, if the
SR-1/SR-1a Update determines that a file to be updated is a later
version than the original version of the file included with Office 2000,
the SR-1/SR-1a Update recopies the original file from your Office 2000
CD and then updates the file. As a result, your files are properly
updated, no matter which version they were before you installed the
SR-1a Update.
For these reasons, when the SR-1/SR-1a Update prompts you for your
Office 2000 CD, you must insert the CD to continue installation of the
SR-1/SR-1a Update.
