digital signature does not validate or is not present

[Gordie]

I'm fighting a pesky error, that I believe is in XP. System is XP Pro SP3
with all updates.

Office 2003 suite is currently installed. I have a retail boxed CD of Office
2007 Home and Student. The first thing that appears when it is loaded is a
message: "D:\HomeStudentr.WW\OSETUP.DLL digital signature does not validate
or is not present." Click OK and nothing more is done/seen.

There are many reports of this problem in the Office 2007 sites, most
replies focus on the CD. It is NOT the CD. It works fine on another computer,
also I get the same error with this computer and another CD of Office 2007
HSE. It is not the CD reader either. Following some suggestions, I used
WinZip to extract the files and put them on a clean USB HDD. Same thing
happens there, too. It is definitely a software problem in XP or whatever
install package Office is using.

If the software in the system is corrupted somehow, what is the fix?
Might it be a missing root Certificate Authority?
Miss-behavior by a 3rd party firewall (it is using CA)?

Many would appreciate a real solution to this problem.

 

[Andrew E.]

Few years ago had seen same problem(s) with office..To chk signatures,
go to run,type:SigVerif Use the custom or browse for specific locations...

 

[Gordie]

Thank you, Andrew E. I scanned a clean system (not the one having this
problem) and found 31 files that are not digitally signed. Most are in a
spool folder and relate to various printers.

Perhaps a property was set in the registry that enforces digital signatures
on that system. Otherwise, why would the install fail? Curious.

It just 'feels' like a bug. One always begins to think of malware.

Other ideas, anyone?