Office repair (Office 2000 Premium SP3)

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Situation: Running O2K Premium SP3 on Win98SE system. Error message “unable to start Office Assistant” recommended repair. Ran Repair from original SR1 CD.

Question: Does this in any way negate my previous patching up to SP3? The various modules “About” screen still shows SP3 and MS Office Update scan says everything is up-to-date and that SP3 is installed. I still wonder whether I need to re-apply the SP3 CD or will everything in fact be as it should be?

Any thoughts?

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One of the innovations of the Windows Installer was that it stashed service packs in hidden folders under c:windows (or c:winnt, etc.) so that it could merge the service packs with any new code you loaded from the original CDs. While I certainly can’t guarantee that this works perfectly in every case, unless you start finding problems, I think you can assume that it did work in this case. (I guess if you can’t trigger Outlook’s Object Model Guard security then it was actually rolled back to pre-SP2 levels. Hard to think of anything else dramatic…).

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Just to confirm what I think I’m reading here, can I install Access and add features to PowerPoint safely from my original Office 2000 install CDs even though I’ve installed the SP3 patch? I vaguely remember reading in one of the info files I read about SP1/SP3 that you needed to do a fresh install of Office and/or rerun the patches.

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I still believe what I wrote in my earlier post. As for an entire application, I don’t know, that might create more ripples than a feature or two. Back up first; use the Save My Settings Wizard or the Profile Wizard to try to save Office settings, too. If the worst happens, at least you’ll have that for the reinstall.

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Windows Installer keeps copies of all patches installed. You can see them in your C:WindowsInstaller folder. Right-click one of the .msp files and from pop-up menu choose Properties, then Summary tab. You will see something like “Office 2000 Hotfix…” When Windows starts, Installer checks all files and updates them if necessary. That’s why you can repair Office installation from your original installation CD without re-applying patches.

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Thanks to jscher2000 (as always) and kaplinb for these succinct replies. It is good to know that I can repair to my heart’s content without disrupting the patching process. Quite slick, really!

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