Powerpoint reinstall - can it be done separately or only as part of Office

  • Thread starter Colleyville Alan
  • Start date
C

Colleyville Alan

PPT has been acting strangely (not loading fairly small files or taking very
long to load them, to update, etc). This behaviour started right after an
automation project that opened PPT crashed. Somehow, PPT has been
corrupted.

I tried the "Detect and Repair" option, but while it completed OK, it did
not fix anything. I want to uninstall and reinstall it. Can it be done
without uninstalling and reinstalling all of MS Office? What about my prior
Svc Packs, do I have to download them all over again?

Thanks
 
M

Michael Koerner

Before you go the uninstall route, do a search on your computer for a file
called *.pcb. Rename it to something called .old, start PowerPoint and see if
the problem still exists.

--
<>Please post all follow-up questions/replies to the newsgroup<>
<><>Email unless specifically requested will not be opened<><>
<><><>Do Provide The Version Of PowerPoint You Are Using<><><>
<><><>Do Not Post Attachments In This Newsgroup<><><>
Michael Koerner [MS PPT MVP]


PPT has been acting strangely (not loading fairly small files or taking very
long to load them, to update, etc). This behaviour started right after an
automation project that opened PPT crashed. Somehow, PPT has been
corrupted.

I tried the "Detect and Repair" option, but while it completed OK, it did
not fix anything. I want to uninstall and reinstall it. Can it be done
without uninstalling and reinstalling all of MS Office? What about my prior
Svc Packs, do I have to download them all over again?

Thanks
 
C

Colleyville Alan

Michael Koerner said:
Before you go the uninstall route, do a search on your computer for a file
called *.pcb. Rename it to something called .old, start PowerPoint and see if
the problem still exists.

I've looked for it and it does not appear to be on my system. I am running
Office 2000 on WinXP and have two hard drives. I have looked on both of
them, both for *.pcb and PPT.* with zero results.
Does PPT 2000 not use a pcb or is it possible that the file is not showing
in an explorer search because it is corrupted?



<><>Email unless specifically requested will not be opened<><>
<><><>Do Provide The Version Of PowerPoint You Are Using<><><>
<><><>Do Not Post Attachments In This Newsgroup<><><>
Michael Koerner [MS PPT MVP]


PPT has been acting strangely (not loading fairly small files or taking very
long to load them, to update, etc). This behaviour started right after an
automation project that opened PPT crashed. Somehow, PPT has been
corrupted.

I tried the "Detect and Repair" option, but while it completed OK, it did
not fix anything. I want to uninstall and reinstall it. Can it be done
without uninstalling and reinstalling all of MS Office? What about my prior
Svc Packs, do I have to download them all over again?

Thanks
 
M

Michael Koerner

AFAIK, the pcb file is part of 2000. It is normally located in:

C:\WINDOWS\Application Data\Microsoft\PowerPoint\PPTxx.pcb (xx being your
version). You might also want to have a look here:
Find and Delete PowerPoint's PCB file
http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq/FAQ00404.htm



--
<>Please post all follow-up questions/replies to the newsgroup<>
<><>Email unless specifically requested will not be opened<><>
<><><>Do Provide The Version Of PowerPoint You Are Using<><><>
<><><>Do Not Post Attachments In This Newsgroup<><><>
Michael Koerner [MS PPT MVP]



Michael Koerner said:
Before you go the uninstall route, do a search on your computer for a file
called *.pcb. Rename it to something called .old, start PowerPoint and see if
the problem still exists.

I've looked for it and it does not appear to be on my system. I am running
Office 2000 on WinXP and have two hard drives. I have looked on both of
them, both for *.pcb and PPT.* with zero results.
Does PPT 2000 not use a pcb or is it possible that the file is not showing
in an explorer search because it is corrupted?



<><>Email unless specifically requested will not be opened<><>
<><><>Do Provide The Version Of PowerPoint You Are Using<><><>
<><><>Do Not Post Attachments In This Newsgroup<><><>
Michael Koerner [MS PPT MVP]


PPT has been acting strangely (not loading fairly small files or taking very
long to load them, to update, etc). This behaviour started right after an
automation project that opened PPT crashed. Somehow, PPT has been
corrupted.

I tried the "Detect and Repair" option, but while it completed OK, it did
not fix anything. I want to uninstall and reinstall it. Can it be done
without uninstalling and reinstalling all of MS Office? What about my prior
Svc Packs, do I have to download them all over again?

Thanks
 
S

Steve Rindsberg

I've looked for it and it does not appear to be on my system. I am running
Office 2000 on WinXP and have two hard drives. I have looked on both of
them, both for *.pcb and PPT.* with zero results.
Does PPT 2000 not use a pcb or is it possible that the file is not showing
in an explorer search because it is corrupted?

PPT 2000 uses a PCB file to store any menu/toolbar customizations, and if it
gets too large, PPT may fail to start up. If you haven't customized
menus/toolbars, there likely won't be a PCB file.

Try the Glare Test. Quit all the software, shut down Windows, power down the
PC. Glare at it for five minutes. Turn it on and see if it self-repaired.

Yeah, I know. It sounds as idiotic as the rest of my posts. But it works
sometimes.
 
M

Michael Koerner

Geeeeeez! its only Monday. What can we expect by Friday? (LOL)




Steve Rindsberg said:
I've looked for it and it does not appear to be on my system. I am running
Office 2000 on WinXP and have two hard drives. I have looked on both of
them, both for *.pcb and PPT.* with zero results.
Does PPT 2000 not use a pcb or is it possible that the file is not showing
in an explorer search because it is corrupted?

PPT 2000 uses a PCB file to store any menu/toolbar customizations, and if it
gets too large, PPT may fail to start up. If you haven't customized
menus/toolbars, there likely won't be a PCB file.

Try the Glare Test. Quit all the software, shut down Windows, power down the
PC. Glare at it for five minutes. Turn it on and see if it self-repaired.

Yeah, I know. It sounds as idiotic as the rest of my posts. But it works
sometimes.
 
S

Steve Rindsberg

<g>

The funny thing is that I just used this trick to "fix" PPT 97 on one of the
computers. It had a BAD case of the slows. Rebooting did nothing, but turning
everything off, nap, back on worked wonders.

I don't even think about attempting to explain it anymore.
 
M

Michael Koerner

(LOL)




<g>

The funny thing is that I just used this trick to "fix" PPT 97 on one of the
computers. It had a BAD case of the slows. Rebooting did nothing, but turning
everything off, nap, back on worked wonders.

I don't even think about attempting to explain it anymore.
 
C

Colleyville Alan

Steve Rindsberg said:
PPT 2000 uses a PCB file to store any menu/toolbar customizations, and if it
gets too large, PPT may fail to start up. If you haven't customized
menus/toolbars, there likely won't be a PCB file.

Well to find the PCB file on Windows XP requires the sacrifice of a goat. I
looked everywhere, but XP has created several identities for me all with my
name involved (I did not want them, but must've hit a wrong key at setup or
been bad in a previous life). Anyway, I right clicked on PPT, found the
location of the quick launch exec on the General tab, and when I went there,
the hidden directory appeared with the pcb file inside. It was only 11k and
deleting it and creating a new one only reduced its size to 10k.

No, the real problem was one I solved (other here told me what to do) on
Win98. My temp directory got full and PPT slowed waaaaaaaaaaay down. So
with Win98, I deleted something like 4,000 files from the temp dir, put in
an autoexec bat command to delete everything in it on startup and had no
more problems.

But WinXP hides directories so I found what I *thought* was the temp and it
had little in it. Later on, I found another of several Temp directories
with 3,600 files in it. After emptying it, PPT ran fine again but by now I
was obsessed with finding the PCB file, which I finally did.

Whew! Alls well that ends well, but MS could make it easier on us.
 
S

Steve Rindsberg

But WinXP hides directories so I found what I *thought* was the temp and it
had little in it. Later on, I found another of several Temp directories
with 3,600 files in it. After emptying it, PPT ran fine again but by now I
was obsessed with finding the PCB file, which I finally did.

Dontcha love it?

Yeah, well. Neither do I.

Here's a cute trick, though:

Start, Run
type %homepath%
Click OK

That opens an Explorer window on your "home" folder.
Then open Application Data, Microsoft, PowerPoint.
(You might have to have Show Hidden Files/Folders turned on in Explorer's
Tools, Folder Options, View dialog before you can see Application Data).

They sure seem to work hard at making it hard, don't they?
 
S

Steve Rindsberg

Oh, and ...

Start, Run
%temp%
Click OK

should take you to your Temp folder.

And better:

Start, Run
%AppData%

gets you one step closer to PCB in one less step. ;-)
 

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