Hi folks, Puh-leeeze help! After downloading and installing the updated Windows Installer from the MS Office products update site, I cannot access any Office programs. When I try to, I get a message stating "This application must be installed to run"! All Office programs were working correctly before. Here's what I've looked at and seen so far: -I cannot uninstall Office through Add/Remone Programs. The system complains about the Installer Service not being properly registered. -Windows Installer Service is no longer listed in Services. -I cannot reinstall any files from the Office 2000 Premium CD. Windows Explorer shows the CD-ROM drive disabled with the disk in (only the Office disk)! I can't access it from the command prompt either. Should I try a repair installation of Windows? I'm reluctant to because this computer is crucial at work, and it has many programs installed on it - some of which I'm not sure we have to reinstall. Someone please advise if you have any experience with this problem. Thanks a lot. Roger P.S. I know what you're thinking: I DID install the update on a test computer first, and it worked fine!

To resolve this problem, shut down the Windows Installer service and then re-register it. This makes sure that the Windows Installer engine functions properly. To do this, follow these steps: 1. Click Start, and then click Run. 2. In the Open box, type msiexec /unreg, and then click OK. 3. When this process is complete, click Start, and then click Run. 4. In the Open box, type msiexec /regserver, and then click OK. 5. When this process is complete, reinstall the update.

Thanks for the reply, Christian. In case anyone else has this problem and the advice above doesn't work (it didn't for me), make sure that "System" has full access to the system partition. In the case of the machine I was having this problem with, it didn't, and making it so solved my problem.