MS Office re-install to overcome 'Loading Front Page' start-up err

[JohnWillsteed]

My fiancee has a laptop, with XP installed from her employers network drive a
few years back. For the last year or two it starts up extremely slowly and
has a window re: something like 'Loading Front Page'... then an 'Unable to
load error'. It takes 20-30 minutes to load-up.

From looking into this before, I understand that Office is trying to load,
and is looking for more recent components that can only be downloaded from
the network (or install disks). Well we are now a full 12hr time-zones away,
although she is still with the same employer, so there is no chance it can be
overcome that way.

I just bought a new and full retail copy of MS Office Home last week, which
says it gives me a license for installation on three computers.

Would one course of action be to uninstall Office from this laptop via
Add/Remove, and then reinstall a clean and up to date copy from my discs?

If she has say sub-directories where Office by default stores and saves
files (My Docs, My Pics etc) will those be preserved, or would this then
require an element of rebuilding the software to data-file links?

Many thanks. JW

 

[Gerry]

John


Please post a copy of the Error report.

You can access Event Viewer by selecting Start, Control Panel,
Administrative Tools, and Event Viewer. When researching the meaning
of the error, information regarding Event ID, Source and Description
are important.

A tip for posting copies of Error Reports! Run Event Viewer and double
click on the error you want to copy. In the window, which appears is a
button resembling two pages. Click the button and close Event
Viewer.Now start your message (email) and do a paste into the body of
the message. Make sure this is the first paste after exiting from
Event Viewer.


--


Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[JohnWillsteed]

Ok thanks all. I will be doing some digging around re: various issues/threads
and revert tomorrow (it is getting late here). Many thx

 

[JohnWillsteed]

Ok thanks Gerry,

You're getting a bit beyond me, I see logs but don't see 'error reports'.

The laptop in question is really only used when we have problems with our
main computers, as it is such a pain in the ... to boot up and use.

This morning I booted it up (twice, to clean out updates, and installs, and
then a third time, to get a note of the timing of what it does).

A change from my first post. The missus says she 'did something' and zapped
the automatic loading of 'Office with Front Page', as it was annoying her so
much. So that issue does not happen automatically as before, but it does
happen if you want to load an MS Office app.

The boot up goes roughly as follows...


0.00 Dell logo on screen, progress bar with BIOS for 2-3 seconds
0.45 Usual MS 'Welcome' screen.
1.00 pop-up
'Windows cannot load user profile but has logged you on with a default
profile - 'Ok' - {click ok} [this error is pretty new]
02.25 Usual MS 'Welcome' screen again.
Desktop appears, and HDD is clearly running. Curiously in Tak Manager it
shows 0% CPU useage.
05.00 Task Manager open, but will not tab over to 'processes'
I get the egg-timer on the desk-top
06.30 It flips to processes in Task Manager. The HDD seems to be working, on
and off, quite eratically. McciBrowser.exe is running 3 versions... what on
earth is that...
08.40 MS-Messenger opens. the start up seem finished at this point.

I then try to open Excel and get a pop-up headed
'Microsoft XP Pro with FrontPage'
Please wait whilst windows configures Microsoft Office XP.

Then...

'The feature you are trying to use is on a CD-Rom or other removable disk
that is not available. Insert MS Office XP Pro with FrontPage disk and click
OK/Cancel'

As we haven't the disc, as it was a network install, we click cancel...
giving...

'Error 1706. Set-up cannot find the required files. Check connection or CD
drive... also MSOffice\1033\Setup.hlp'.

Click cancel, and you get a progress bar in a window going in reverse, and a
new smaller window 'Problem with shortcut' and 'Fatal error during
installation - OK-.

So there seem to be two issues really:-

-Why does it take 8-10 minutes to boot up?

-MS Office would seem to be toasted. It could be repaired from the
admin/network drive but that is not accessible. Can I uninstall/reinstall a
fresh copy of MS Office... will this automatically link into MyDocs etc... or
will there be an element of rebuilding required after a reinstall?

 

[Gerry]

John

What version of Microsoft Office is installed? Is it 2000, 2002 or 2007?
We are discussing your laptop and not one 12 time zones away?

Event Viewer -open the system log. You will see a number of columns with
each line representing a logged report. On an error free computer the
column under the Type header will entirely contain "Information"
reports. Where there is a problem you will see either "Error" or
"Warning" reports. Open these and copy and paste into your next post
following the tip in my last post. Before you start click once or twice
on the Date header so that the latest reports appear first. The only
reports of real interest are those relating to the last time the
computer was booted.

--


Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ok thanks Gerry,

You're getting a bit beyond me, I see logs but don't see 'error
reports'.

The laptop in question is really only used when we have problems with
our main computers, as it is such a pain in the ... to boot up and
use.

This morning I booted it up (twice, to clean out updates, and
installs, and then a third time, to get a note of the timing of what
it does).

A change from my first post. The missus says she 'did something' and
zapped the automatic loading of 'Office with Front Page', as it was
annoying her so much. So that issue does not happen automatically as
before, but it does happen if you want to load an MS Office app.

The boot up goes roughly as follows...


0.00 Dell logo on screen, progress bar with BIOS for 2-3 seconds
0.45 Usual MS 'Welcome' screen.
1.00 pop-up
'Windows cannot load user profile but has logged you on with a
default profile - 'Ok' - {click ok} [this error is pretty new]
02.25 Usual MS 'Welcome' screen again.
Desktop appears, and HDD is clearly running. Curiously in Tak Manager
it shows 0% CPU useage.
05.00 Task Manager open, but will not tab over to 'processes'
I get the egg-timer on the desk-top
06.30 It flips to processes in Task Manager. The HDD seems to be
working, on and off, quite eratically. McciBrowser.exe is running 3
versions... what on earth is that...
08.40 MS-Messenger opens. the start up seem finished at this point.

I then try to open Excel and get a pop-up headed
'Microsoft XP Pro with FrontPage'
Please wait whilst windows configures Microsoft Office XP.

Then...

'The feature you are trying to use is on a CD-Rom or other removable
disk that is not available. Insert MS Office XP Pro with FrontPage
disk and click OK/Cancel'

As we haven't the disc, as it was a network install, we click
cancel... giving...

'Error 1706. Set-up cannot find the required files. Check connection
or CD drive... also MSOffice\1033\Setup.hlp'.

Click cancel, and you get a progress bar in a window going in
reverse, and a new smaller window 'Problem with shortcut' and 'Fatal
error during installation - OK-.

So there seem to be two issues really:-

-Why does it take 8-10 minutes to boot up?

-MS Office would seem to be toasted. It could be repaired from the
admin/network drive but that is not accessible. Can I
uninstall/reinstall a fresh copy of MS Office... will this
automatically link into MyDocs etc... or will there be an element of
rebuilding required after a reinstall?

 

[JohnWillsteed]

Hi Gerry, thanks for that, I will work on it.

re: version. I'm not sure how to tell, as I cannot open any Office
application.

Drilling down in My Computer/Program Files/MS Office, I see the files are
stored in an 'Office 10' sub-directory. I believe the nomenclature relates to
the version, but am not sure in what way.

Once I have tried your other suggestion, I will revert

p.s. Yes this is our laptop (in SE Asia), the network it was originally
installed from is in New York.

Thx, JW

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Hi Gerry, thanks for that, I will work on it.

re: version. I'm not sure how to tell, as I cannot open any Office
application.

Drilling down in My Computer/Program Files/MS Office, I see the files are
stored in an 'Office 10' sub-directory. I believe the nomenclature relates to
the version, but am not sure in what way.

The following are three names for the same version of Microsoft
Office:

1. Office 10

2. Office XP

3. Office 2002

 

[JohnWillsteed]

Thanks, this is very helpful. The version of XP is not 2007. It was installed
in circa 2004, so it is either 2000 or 2002. I'd hazard a guess the latter as
it was network installed from the kind of organisation that would keep up to
date on these things.

I've looked at the Event viewer. Crikey, it lists 20 error events just from
the start up I have just done! I'll try and e-mail over to myself the details
as you explain (how to do).

--------
Event Type: Error
Event Source: Disk
Event Category: None
Event ID: 7
Date: 7/3/2009
Time: 11:33:54 AM
User: N/A
Computer: {Owners name}
Description:
The device, \Device\Harddisk0\D, has a bad block.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
Data:
0000: 03 00 68 00 01 00 b6 00 ..h...¶.
0008: 00 00 00 00 07 00 04 c0 .......À
0010: 00 01 00 00 9c 00 00 c0 ....œ..À
0018: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0020: 00 9c 5a 91 08 00 00 00 .œZ‘....
0028: 39 f1 00 00 00 00 00 00 9ñ......
0030: ff ff ff ff 01 00 00 00 ÿÿÿÿ....
0038: 40 00 00 84 02 00 00 00 @..„....
0040: 00 20 0a 12 40 03 20 40 . ..@. @
0048: 00 00 00 00 0a 00 00 00 ........
0050: 00 00 00 00 48 c5 be 82 ....Hž‚
0058: 00 00 00 00 70 2e ce 82 ....p.΂
0060: 02 00 00 00 4e ad 48 04 ....N­H.
0068: 28 00 04 48 ad 4e 00 00 (..H­N..
0070: 08 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0078: f0 00 03 00 00 00 00 0b ð.......
0080: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0088: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........

 

[Gerry]

John

The error report is saying that you have a bad sector on your hard drive
in partition D. Without further investigation it is difficult to assess
the significance. Bad sectors do occur and you can use chkdsk to mark
the sector as bad so that it ceases to be used and that is the end of
the story. On other occasions you can find further bad sectors each time
you run chkdsk until the disk fails. Unless you find no further bad
sectors after fixing with chkdsk the problem is that disk failure can
occur at any time.

You should immediately back up your data files.

Next run chkdsk. Select Start, Run, type "cmd" without quotes and click
OK. Type "chkdsk d: /f /r" without quotes and depress the ENTER key.
After chkdsk completes type exit and depress the ENTER key to return to
the Windows desktop.

Try HD Tune. It only gives information and does not fix any
problems.

Download and run it and see what it turns up. You want HD Tune
(freeware) version 2.55 not HD Tune Pro (not Freeware) version 3.00.
http://www.hdtune.com/

Select the Info tabs and place the cursor on the drive under Drive
letter and then double click the two page icon ( copy to Clipboard )
and copy into a further message.

Select the Health tab and then double click the two page icon ( copy to
Clipboard ) and copy into a further message. Make sure you do a full
surface scan with HD Tune.

The full surface gives information about bad sectors and can be used to
monitor their number. If you find more you will need to run chkdsk to
"repair" the drive.

--


Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[JohnWillsteed]

Thanks Gerry, that is very helpful.

First thing, how do I best back up everything on the laptop? It has USB
ports. If I connect it with a male-male USB cable to my desktop, will it
recognise it in a similar way to an external drive? (and I can them copy all
files to my desktops own external (or indeed internal) drive?).

p.s. The laptop has a DVD ROM, but no writer...

 

[JohnWillsteed]

ps. Or is plugging my desktop external hard-drive into the laptop and
backing up that way the better solution?

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

ps. Or is plugging my desktop external hard-drive into the laptop and
backing up that way the better solution?

Yes, if you have enough room on the external drive to back up both the
desktop and laptop.

 

[JohnWillsteed]

Ok Gerry and Ken, I appreciate your help.

The status now, is that I have managed to take a complete back-up image of
the laptop drive, to an external drive (and tested some samples of the
contents). So we should be ok on the data side of things.

I tried to run chkdsk as suggested, but it returned...
'The type of file system is RAW.
CHKDSK is not available for RAW drives.'

Any tips of what that means would be appreciated.