Can't get Outlook to work on New Computer

Topic

New Reply

I have a new computer and I cannot get Outlook to work on it. The new computer runs on Vista (new OS for me).
I can open Outlook, but I get the following error message when I go to set up an account:
“The operation failed because of a registry or installation problem. Restart Outlook and try again. If the problem persists, reinstall.”

Here’s the history:
I installed Office XP from my disk. Everything but Outlook appeared to work. I got an error message in Outlook and it gave me a link to a Microsoft site that told me I should upgrade (I had hoped to avoid that).
I have a trial version of Office 2007 that came with the computer, so I tried that. I posted about some issues with the trial version yesterday in the General Office forum. Following that post, I uninstalled Office 2007, Uninstalled Office XP, and then downloaded a fresh Office 2007 trial from the Microsoft website and installed it (decided to just skip the XP this time). This fixed all the issues except Outlook.

Outlook will open, but when I go to Tools>Account Settings (to set up an account – none has been set up yet), I get the error message above “The operation failed because of a registry or installation problem. Restart Outlook and try again. If the problem persists, reinstall.”
If I click on File>Open>Office Data File, nothing happens (no window to find the file). If I click on File>Open>Calendar, it appears to work fine (it took me to a file selection window – I didn’t have a calendar file to try it with. I DO have an Outlook Data file that I am desperate to open today)

I went to the control panel and ran “repair” from the add/remove programs window. I restarted the computer, twice but I am still getting the error message.
Any advice?

Thank you,
-cynthia

Reply | Quote

Replies

I am still trying things.
I went to the Windows Help and Support Center and looked up that error message. It referred me to an article at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/287072/, But as I was following the steps, I created a new profile as instructed but then it said

“There was an error accessing your system registry”

The MS Support Error Message search doesn’t seem to bring up anything useful for this error in Outlook.
So I’m still frustrated in my attempts to get Outlook to run on this machine.

Reply | Quote

“There was an error accessing your system registry”

I don’t know the answer, but this Google search reveals quite a few similar problems and a few suggested solutions. The one at “Experts Exchange” seems promising. DON’T click on any of the “view accepted solution” or “start your 7 day trial” links. Simply scroll down to the bottom of the page to look at the “Accepted Solution”.

Reply | Quote

Thanks for the Google link. I tried a couple of those things – no luck. I don’t want to mess with the registry myself and it looks like that’s what it’s going to take, so I’ve called in a professional for Friday morning (was hoping to resolve this before then, but computers sometimes just work in their own time!)

-cynthia

Reply | Quote

Just to close out this topic, I had a professional work on it Friday morning. He did an uninstall and also used an “Office Removal Tool” that cleans out all the stuff Office leaves behind (I had already tried deleting the various Office folders I could find – that didn’t do it). Then we did a fresh install of the Office 2007 Trial version (decided to just forget about the XP2002 version, so I guess I’ll be buying 2007 sometime before the end of June).

This worked, and I can now open the file I was trying to open – and also send and receive email from my computer again.

Thanks for the suggestions along the way.
-cynthia

Reply | Quote

Did you install this “Office XP” while the trial version of 2007 was still on the computer?

DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

Reply | Quote

Originally I had installed Office XP, but after uninstalling BOTH versions, I did not reinstall the XP version (the trial version that had come pre-installed on the computer was accidentally activated when I tried to open an office document simply out of habit prior to installing XP – I had asked questions about that on the Office General Forum yesterday – but all the non-Outlook issues seem to have resolved themselves after removing XP)

-c

Reply | Quote