update (still need help): Windows installer re-installs Excel every time

[jps]

[Office 2003 Pro installed on XP Pro]

Posted previously, and got a quick response from Carey Frisch suggesting
trying the Windows Installer Clean-up utility. Unfortunately that did not
solve the problem.

The issue: Every time Excel is launched the windows installer appears and
takes its time re-installing components. Launching WORD also takes a long
long time, and the installer message appears briefly but not the "installing
components" progress message box.

Since then I have done a lot of investigation. MS Knowledge Base articles
290740, 265194 and 312956 all describe issues interestingly close to my
problem. I have done my best to mimic the solutions given in those articles
(given I am using Office 2003 so my registry entries are under "11.0"). No
help...

Also, when using the "Administrator" login the installer runs the first time
Excel is launched and after that it launches normally. I have enabled
verbose windows installer logging and launched Excel under both my normal
user login and the Administrator login. For the normal login I get what I
asked for... a verbose log file but I do not find the obvious trigger with
my untrained eye. With the Administrator login I get just a few lines, and
maybe not even from the Excel launch?

One interesting difference is the "calling process" listed in the first line
of the log files.
Normal login: Calling process: C:\Program Files\Microsoft
Office\OFFICE11\EXCEL.EXE
Administrator login: Calling process: C:\WINDOWS\system32\svchost.exe

 

[jps]

Creating a new user "fixed" this problem. There is a painful process of
getting email, desktop and other settings back for the new user, but
this worked for me