MS Office XP problems

[nihil]

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!

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

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