MS Office XP problems

Hi, this is the scenario:

Windows 2000 SP4 Fully patched.
MS Office XP Professional (2002) Fully patched.

Attempting to start any Office application brings up the (Office) "safe mode" prompt. If you accept the app opens in safe mode, if you decline it opens in normal mode.

Looking in "event viewer" only shows the Error Events 2000 and 2001 depending on whether you accept or reject the safe mode start prompt. Clearing the event logs has no effect.

Going into "Accessories" and "System Information" lets you display information about the Office 10 suite modules that have been installed. The last item is "Office Event/Application Fault" This is empty.

Going into "Microsoft Office Tools" then "Office Application Recovery" has no effect.

Strangely, when you ask it to start "detect and repair" for an application from within the application call, it installs MS Publisher 2002, no matter what the original application was! :confused:

Now, I am no expert on the "safe mode" that was introduced with Office XP (or 2002 or 10.0, they are the same suite), but my understanding is that it is to work around start up errors and omits some plug-ins and features. Going into "help about" and then "disabled items" shows that there are no disabled items, which sort of implies that it didn't find anything in an error condition :confused:

Anyone got any ideas?

UPDATE #1

The weird thing with it constantly wanting to install Publisher (which was already there) got me wondering if it wasn't some sort of access path corruption?

More out of hope than experience or expectation, I opened Windows Explorer and navigated to C:\ Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office 10\ and fired up the executables for each module.

That seems to have fixed the problem, as I can open them from there, and by going into <Start> <Programs>. I did not consciously reset any access paths or Registry values, but it seems to have fixed itself?

Can it withstand a reboot is the next question :D

I guess the first place to start would be the path statement to the office apps, and to make sure the /safe is not appended at the end

Hmmm,

I can see where you are coming from, but it leaves a few unexplained issues:

1. What caused it to happen to all the Office apps in the first place?
2. Why did it always try to reinstall just the Publisher app?
3. Why if you rejected the start in safe mode did it open normally, rather than exiting?

Strange indeed :confused:

1) It's MS - it does strange things be default.
2) See 1
3) That's what the option is for - safe mode or the alternative is normal.

Just back from hols so will check those errors in more detail later.

Yeah your right, it was the only thing I could think of at the time.....probably the best bet will be to extract the hklm\software\microsoft\office and cross compare....or just rip it out and replace with a working reg file.

Hmmm,

I was under the impression that when the application prompted for safe mode it was either "yes" or it exited? It would seem to go against the whole concept if it let you open an unstable system in normal mode?

Microsoft touted the idea that it would let you continue working safely until you fixed the problem.

I think I now have an idea of the probable cause. It is my Wife's machine and she was going through one of those CD based Office courses. Now the CD is interactive read only, and for Office 2000.

OK, office XP can handle that in its natural environment, but may well have been confused by the CD medium which it couldn't offer to convert?

:confused: