Preparing to install...

T

thomas234

Big Geek
I'm trying to sort out a Windows XP SP2 installation which seems to be faulty for no reason.

A while ago, whenever Microsoft Office Excel 2003 was started it always said "Preparing to Install...", waited about 10 seconds, then started Excel. Eventually the user got annoyed with this, and tried to uninstall Office 2003 to replace it with 2000. However, it wouldn't uninstall (I don't know what the error was). They proceeded to install Office 2000 and that works fine now.

However, since Office 2000 has been installed, both Outlook Express 6 and Internet Explorer 7 have started saying "Preparing to Install". Eventually they both start, but after a few seconds Outlook Express dies and Windows says it has encountered a problem and needs to be closed etc...

The dialog box which says "Preparing to Install" is titled "Windows Installer", so I have tried re-installing that. I've also tried running some sort of Windows Installer Clean up wizard which it said reset it to the default settings.

Neither of these have had any effect, and I'm now stuck for ideas. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks, Thomas
 
I remember getting that message when changing computers in the library (while at uni), was told has something to do with roaming profiles or something (personally thought it wasn't setup correctly as it didn't happen on the network computers) but I guess that's not the case here. Even so check to see if roaming profiles is on etc else I'd consider a clean install.
 
it may be a bit comlicated for u but you could kill the directives in the codes for the auto run that would stop it. alsthough it would be difficult, and i would do a clean install like sniper said.
 
Thanks for the suggestion Luke, would it be possible that you can go into more detail. I'm reasonably good with computers, but I've never heard of what you're suggesting. I also couldn't find anything using Google. I would greatly appreciate any links or explanations, as I'm always wanting to learn!

Thanks, Thomas
 
^i would but it would take a lot of one on one talk talking u threw stuff, and u would need some knoledge of codingas well. If i was there in person i would do some stuf, test it, then go in and scrible a few extra lines of code until i got it right, i wouldn't be able to tell u how to do that, so do a fresh install, or find a local person who knows this stuff.
 
Ok thanks a lot for the suggestion anyway! I think you're probably correct about it being a bit above me, I'm still learning the basics of programming using C#.

Thanks anyway,

Thomas

btw... The method you're describing, is that how no-cd cracks are made for games? They somehow seem to bypass CD-Checks.
 
^im sure with the the material to learn some coding you could very well do this :).

Yss thats generally what no cd cracks do.
 
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