Off Topic MSFT Office problem

[Mike Painter]

I recently moved from a 20 to a 200 Gb drive (Maxtor) and used their
utility to move everything.
I thought it went well at first, however now Excel and Word try to launch
the install program, then fail. Access has had no problem. Outlook will
receive but not send. OE works fine.
The Office setup fails with "This patch package could not be opened verify
that the patch package exists and that you can access it."
There were a few other oddball things.
One program lost its registration key, the wireless keyboard I use will not
launch outlook, Outlook will not launch from a web page because "it is not
properly installed", etc
I've tried all the solutions I could find on the web with zero luck.
Next step is to try to uninstall but that may not be possible according to
several sites.

Anyone with any ideas before I start over with a clean disk and a few
backups of everything?

 

[Smartin]

I recently moved from a 20 to a 200 Gb drive (Maxtor) and used their
utility to move everything.
I thought it went well at first, however now Excel and Word try to launch
the install program, then fail. Access has had no problem. Outlook will
receive but not send. OE works fine.
The Office setup fails with "This patch package could not be opened verify
that the patch package exists and that you can access it."
There were a few other oddball things.
One program lost its registration key, the wireless keyboard I use will not
launch outlook, Outlook will not launch from a web page because "it is not
properly installed", etc
I've tried all the solutions I could find on the web with zero luck.
Next step is to try to uninstall but that may not be possible according to
several sites.

Anyone with any ideas before I start over with a clean disk and a few
backups of everything?

IME, if you change your primary hard drive, you should treat it as an
occasion to reinstall everything, starting with the OS. Should be well
worth it in the end! HTH

 

[Arvin Meyer [MVP]]

Hi Mike,

I've had nothing but problems trying to move an entire drive image. My worst
experience was with Norton Ghost which reported everything properly backed
up, then wouldn't give me anything, including the data. I eventually got the
original image to give me the data.

If you have the data, and all the programs, reinstall. It will save you time
and grief in the long run.

 

[Fred Boer]

Dear Mike:

Just to add something which is probably unecessary, and which is certainly
implicit in what Arvin and Smartin have said... make sure you have a good,
*working*, *tested* backup of your data. Don't forget things like your
Internet "Favourites", and Outlook Express Mail Account(s) settings, folders
of program data stored in unusual places, and whatever else might be
valuable, but might not be in "My Documents" or in whatever "Data" folders
you might have.

Forgive me if this seems common sense, and, of course this is probably
something you've already thought of, but, sadly, I speak from bitter
experience!

Cheers!
Fred Boer

 

[Mike Painter]

Dear Mike:

Just to add something which is probably unecessary, and which is
certainly implicit in what Arvin and Smartin have said... make sure
you have a good, *working*, *tested* backup of your data. Don't
forget things like your Internet "Favourites", and Outlook Express
Mail Account(s) settings, folders of program data stored in unusual
places, and whatever else might be valuable, but might not be in "My
Documents" or in whatever "Data" folders you might have.

Forgive me if this seems common sense, and, of course this is probably
something you've already thought of, but, sadly, I speak from bitter
experience!

Cheers!
Fred Boer

Thanks and these messages have pretty much convincd me it's time.
I have backups of everything and found out about both Outlook and OE's
hiding places - the hard way - quite a while back.