I need to buy some time installing office SP2

January 11, 2006 9:54 AM

Office 2003 SP2 grief - it cannot install and i want it to quit trying to install for a few days.

Here's the situation - my previous company got acquired by another company and IT touched my work laptop. They installed/modified various things, mainly for networking as well as creating a new profile in wondows.

Then Office 2003 SP2 came out a few days later - downloading it wasn't a problem but I'm unable to install it. It tries to, but fails. I suspect this is due to office being installed into my previous profile, then now some of my personal files stored under new profile. I'm unclear exactly what the IT/IS did, but I'm 95% certain installation failure is due to creation of new profile.

What's worse - windows update keeps trying to install Office SP2 every now and then, and during that time, my entire machine freaks out. I can't move my mouse, keyboard input is either disabled or enters something i didn't intend to input, switching between applications slows down, music streaming through iTunes gets skipped then audio gets corrupted. This happens every 5-10 minutes for duration of 30 seconds.

I shot an email to IT/IS but because they're trying to convert 5k+ employees laptops/desktops, they're quite swamped. I even had my manager tell IT/IS the importance of this issue, and they have only managed to change the priority from 5 to 3 (7-10 days wait to 3-5 days wait.) This is affecting my work and performance and I am having one of the busiest week right now - the performance of laptop is really affecting me.

I'm thinking uninstalling/reinstalling office would help, except the CD/installer is in the possession of IT/IS. Sigh. I don't have time to transfer files to my mac desktop machine. So I'm thinking my only option is to tell windows update/office update to quit trying to install for a few days - so far I have not found a way to do that and I wondered if anyone might.

This is driving me insane.

posted by grafholic to computers & internet (4 comments total)

Try and go to Windows Update and check the "do not display this update again" box against Office SP2.

BTW: What error do you get when you try to install the update?
posted by ed\26h at 10:15 AM on January 11, 2006

I had a similar problem to this one both of my machines.

The problem was because a folder called MOSCache is created on your drive during Office install and it is needed for major updates. Unfortunately, Windows disk cleaner utility defaults to remove this when run.

The only way I found to fix this problem was to completely uninstall and reinstall Office - the repair option did not work. I backed everything up including my pst files and settings and it wasn't as hard to do as I thought it would be.
posted by jeffmik at 11:59 AM on January 11, 2006

ed/26h - when i go to windows update, it doesn't show office SP2 in the list because the files are already download.
the error i see is "install failed". that's it. no number. nothing.
i can cancel out or try to install again, which results in the same.

jeffmik - ugh, i was hoping reinstall is the only option as i cannot afford to continue dealing with my machine for another 3 days.
posted by grafholic at 1:03 PM on January 11, 2006

Completely uninstall Office, reinstall it, and download the full installer update version (Office2003SP2-KB887616-FullFile-ENU.exe).
posted by Sharcho at 4:08 PM on January 11, 2006