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Thanks for the offer Bill, but I ended up installing office 2007 as my dad had a licence spare and I baulked at the thought of installing all those patches manually. It was all the post-SP3 patches that were bugging me – SP3 and SR1-a are still available, and take care of everything up to that point (I hope!!).

Yes, it’s easy to create admin installation point. Rather than provide links which will go out of date, just google administrative installation point office whichever version you’re interested in, and you’ll find a host of resources.

The advantage of doing this even for a single machine is that, if you keep the admin point up to date and on a separate partition, reinstallation to the latest, patched version is a breeze. The disadvantage, and the reason that I slipped in my updating, is that you need to download each required patch manually (usually after running office update to find the patches you need, then following the more information links to the relevant bulletins). You need to download the fullfile version. Then you have to extract the patch contents, apply the patch contents to your admin install point (using “msiexec /a Admin PathMSI File /p Update PathMSP File SHORTFILENAMES=1″ where admin path is the path to your administrative installation, and update path is the folder where you have extracted the patch contents to, this procedure is usually documented in the relevant bulletin for the patch, by the way), and then update your office installation with “msiexec /i Admin PathMSI File REINSTALL=ALL REINSTALLMODE=vomus”. I never found a way to automate this for multiple patches. Running office update just became so much simpler – until MS pull support from your favourite version.

Interestingly, my bright but predigital dad finds the office 2007 I ended up installing (when I discovered that the copy he’d bought with his laptop allowed installation on 3 machines) much easier and more intuitive than office 2000!

Yes Chris, that would make sense, thanks.

So, this is the list I’ve compiled:

822035, 824936, 824993, 826292, 827431, 830347, 830349, 873372, 873380, 887977, 889167, 892842, 895333, 905553, 905555, 905646, 905757, 914797, 916520, 917152, 917345, 918424, 920822, 920906, 920910, 921568, 921593, 921595, 921606, 923090, 923093, 923274, 925524, 929062, 929139, 931660, 934392, 934447, 934526, 936511, 940596, 942669, 943990, 944425, 946979, 946986, 947361, 949007, 950250, 951582, 955441, 955461, 956328, 957790, 957838, 958435, 959964, 969600, 969683

This is amalgamated from the technet search page on current bulletins pertinent to Office 2000 limited to Service Pack 3, searching the MS download centre for “update 2000” limited to Office products and selecting all updates dated after the release of Office 2000 SP3, and following any links to security updates from the “what others are downloading” lists at the bottom of the download pages for any updates identified above, whilst discarding any that didn’t list SP3 as a pre-requisite.

I have not included updates for Project or Publisher, but the above list does include some updates that might not be necessary, such as those for Access Snapshot viewer, or Word Perfect converters.

The list also is mostly security updates, and not, for instance, DST update packs or additional functionality downloads.

For the earlier updates (mostly those beginning with 8), I did check the bulletin pages to make sure there was no note they’d been superceded.

There would appear to be many more updates if one were to go down the route of checking each Detection and Deployment bulletin for patch day releases, but my life is too short (and several hours shorter than it would have been if office update still worked :().

Thanks for all your suggestions

Thanks very much for those, most helpful.

Unfortunately, the water isn’t clearing.

I’d been very pleased to come across the link you gave, jscher, which revealed 20 bulletins for Office 2000 SP3. For the first time I felt I was getting somewhere, after much frustration with the MS website (eg Microsoft Update FAQ says that you need to use Office UPdate if you have an administrative installation OR office 2000 – I have both – but of course office update no longer exists; the potential offered by the inventory tool, only to find that although the link for invcm is live, that for invcf, the definitions file, is dead). Unfortunately, there are a number of updates (eg those detailed in the tech rep article I referred to – tho it is from 2007), which don’t appear among those 20. Also, prior to coming across the technet link, I’d been trying to compile my own list from chasing down lists in deployment bulletins that seemed to refer to O2k SP3, and then following the “what others are downloading” links to other security updates, and come across a whole load of others, which seemed to apply.

The difficulty, of course, is knowing which updates have been superceded by others, although none of the updates I’ve found are from bulletins listed as being superceded in any of the 20 bulletins from the technet search.

Thanks very much for the useful list, Chris. Interestingly, your list includes only 14 of the 21 updates linked from the above 20 bulletins, and 3 of those 14 are in the “not required” list. Your list also details 11 of the 16 security updates I’d chased down by following links (and none of those were in your not required section). Your list also includes 22 updates (7 of which were under not required) which I hadn’t found yet!!

I also tried Offline Update (version 6.2, which was the last to include office 2000), but it only found 2 post SP3 updates to install.

I did start going through all the deployment updates such as , to follow the bulletin links, but there are just too many to cope with, so that’s a non-starter (and, I guess, should really have shown up in the technet search).

It’s enough to make one download Open Office, except I have some Access databases, and have never found a non-office app which can deal with them, and this computer’s going to be for my dad, who doesn’t deal with change well, and is used to office (and office 2k at that).

For what it’s worth, here’s a list of the updates I’ve found that aren’t in any of the above lists: 921568, 934447, 942669, 943990, 958435.

Chris, these are the securtiy updates from the technet bulletins not in your list: 892842, 905646, 946986, 957790, 957838, 969600, 969683.

A final caveat – I can’t recall whether everything I’ve found is rated “critical” for Office 2000 SP3, which may reflect some of the discrepancies.

This is exhausting, so thanks for all your help.

I meant Office 2000 SP3, and there are definitely some critical post SP3 security updates – see here for starters – http://www.techrepublic.com/article/get-up-to-speed-on-microsofts-seven-critical-security-bulletins/6183643 But I can’t see any way to access a list of post SP3 updates, or where to download them.

Just to close this thread.

Did try a repair install, but just as everything was going well, I found my product key wasn’t recognised. Apparently you can’t slipstream volume licenced editions of XP in any later OS – Thanks Microsoft. I restored the broken image, then tried my XPSP2 disc, but it didn’t recognise my XP install to repair. I then found an old HD to do a temporary XP install purely for the purposes of slipstreaming SP3, but the resultant disc didn’t recognise my XP install to repair either.

At my wits end, I set the Vista partition active, planning to wipe and start again, and, bizarrely, XP booted successfully.

Given that all the threads I found about hanging at crcdisk.sys were from Vista owners, I’m wondering if it was actually Vista that was hanging, even though the XP partition was set to active (and yes, I have checked that I hadn’t got them confused), and that it’s actually an MBR/MFT problem. So am going to end up having to wipe the disc and reaquaint myself with the inner workings of MBR and boot sectors. Joy.

Thanks for your input.

I don’t have a dual boot setup, as I mentioned I just change which partition is active via the LogicalDiskManagement screen of the computer management snap in, so how is checking that XP is an option in Vista startup going to help?

I was afraid I might have to do a repair install, as I don’t have a bootable installation disc, as I long ago copied my installation files onto a separate partition on my HD, but, try as I might, I can’t find a boot environment which will allow me to run winnt32 from that folder, and I think I only slipstreamed SP2 into those files, whereas my XP installation has now been upgraded to SP3. My laptop doesn’t have a CD drive, but I’m sure I’d find someone to burn one for me once I’ve created the ISO. There are tutorials around, so I might have to look for that.

Would be so much easier if there was a way to run sfc on a remote target partition.

Ironically, one of the reasons for bothering to update the Vista partition was to then image it and reclaim that partition, although one of the problems is that, thanks to the absurd size of winsxs, the image ends up being enormous.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t help me with my current predicament.

Does anyone have any thoughts as to why updating Vista on one partition should impact XP on another partition, and, more importantly, any suggestions as to how I can get my XP installation working again without a reinstallation (lots of progs installed, including many unrecoverables, such as GOTD giveaways).

Thanks

Thanks for all your thoughts.

After posting this, I disabled Teredo, but, surprisingly, the activity continues.

After reading your posts, I’ve stopped the homegroup services, but that hasn’t seemed to solve the problem either.

I take the point about apps phoning home, but nothing is allowed out of my computer without explicit permission, and the strange thing is that none of the apps tries to phone home via a conventional port/protocol, or even tries to access their home network – all the activity is to hit-nxdomain.opendns.com.

Baffled.

I really miss having search in the context menu for a specific folder. There are many times when I want to search just one folder (and its sub folders), for a word in the content, or, alternatively, know the name of the file, but want to limit my search to my Docments folder tree. It’s a very convoluted process to do this in Windows 7, and strikes me that it’s another classic example of MS thinking they know better: Yes, the search in windows 7 is way better and quicker than its predecessors, but NO, that doesn’t mean you can bin the way that people used to do things (turn it off by default, by all means, but, unless it messes with the new paradigm, which this clearly doesn’t, don’t bury it).

I had a look at the proffered tutorials and found nothing useful in this regard. Do any of the third party add ons offer this functionality (and, importantly, do they allow you to specify a location for the index, as well).

Thanks

Hans, you’re indefatigable. Don’t know how you do it.

Had forgotten about that troubleshooter – and it wasn’t as painful as I recall.

Problem appeared to be a rogue global add in.

Thanks very much

Thanks

I have, indeed, relocated my My Documents folder.

I did try running the command prompt both as an adminstrator and a regular user, and had the same result.

I may be able to get away with netuse now, as I’m remembering that my previous problem was with a laptop with no built in network adaptor, and it failed to function in that setting, whereas subst would work fine.

These days, I’d still prefer to use subst, because the circumstances in which I’d be using it are when (infrequently) revisiting programs from that earlier era, and I only want a temporary drive substitiution, whereas netuse defaults to permanent.

I don’t want to use anything too new fangled, as I still have machines running windows 2000, as well as XP and, sadly, Vista (a tablet laptop, and I don’t have any other OS which will support the tablet functionality, other than that which was preinstalled).

Can anyone else confirm this behaviour in Vista?

What was the error message? – it’s missing from your post.

Sorry, forgot to go back and add it. The error message is “The requested member of the collection does not exist”

What user interface action did you take, that got recorded as “WordBasic.ViewFooterOnly”?

I chose “Blank (Three Columns)” from the Insert Footer Menu on the Insert ribbon.

I don’t think there is any similar equivalent in previous versions of Word – although I’ve moved straight from 2000 to 2007, and am not really enjoying the experience, I have to say.

There is no similar View Footer command in 2007 that I can see. The way that footers are dealt with is also very different. I was used to the old way with the split windows allowing me to easily left and right align text in a footer. Now it seems that the options are either to choose the three column format from the proffered styles, or do it all manually. There’s a similar problem with page numbers, where the large number of different styles offered means clicking and scrolling just to add Page X of Y, or remembering the codes for manual entry. But I digress.

Thanks for the help, but I don’t think this problem is amenable to testing in previous versions of Word.

Any more ideas?

I

Should there be a space at the beginning of the AutoText/BuildingBlock name?

Sorry, posted without proper formatting. Never quite got the hang of the lounge tags, but just being lazy. The continuation of the line is indeed indented.

Does the PC support booting from a USB drive?

If it does, see DOS USB boot drive – Vista Forums & Boot From A USB Flash Drive.

Joe

Unfortunately it won’t – and I have checked that there’s no BIOS update that will enable it to.