I hope the following information will help some viewers who are updating Microsoft Office and have both Office 2000 and Office XP Small Business installed on their computers. Because of the recent concerns over worm viruses, I downloaded Windows critical updates for all my computers (I have two desktop PC's, one with ME and one with 2000) and did the same for my laptop (ME). I also downloaded Office updates on all computers as I heard that "critical" updates were also required and available. No problem with the desktops, but the laptop required 8 Office updates which I did all at once. Part-way through the install the laptop stopped working (frozen screen) and I had to "manually" shut down whereupon my screen changed to orange and black vertical stripes. After scan-disc, Outlook wouldn't open and Word and Excel appeared non-existent. Also, the screen often froze during start-up. I spent 4 hours with Microsoft support. Changing registry values, un-installing Office, re-installing Office and, finally, things appeared to work okay. Just recently, I noticed that when I opened a Word document that I had protected with a password, the bar at the very top of the screen and the task bar at the very bottom of the screen would start flashing and soon an error message would appear indicating Word needed to close down. Another frustrating call to Microsoft revealed that unchecking the "enable Office plug-in" in Norton Anti-Virus under Options, Other, Miscellaneous has corrected the problem. Whether this was the fault all along is unsure. I apologize for this long-winded account of a most annoying afternoon but if it helps others, it might be worth the read.

Use system restore on the ME system then run Office repair, then do the patches again ONE AT A TIME....this is critical...also, make sure that your firewall is disabled. This is probably why the systems locked on you. Good luck. Delljohnb