I was not able to install Office 97 Professional on Windows XP Home SP2 at first. Office installation would give three error dialogs at the very end of the process, something about "register" and "workgoup", resulting in failed installation. The install would put the Office files into the proper directories, but apparently would not register and no Office programs appeared on the start->program menu. After several trial and errors, I found the following solution. To install Office 97 on Windows XP SP2, 1. First Install office WITHOUT ACCESS, and WITHOUT HTML authoring feature. 2. Apply Office 97 service release patches SR1 and SR2. (get these from Microsoft.com, the files I used are named SR1OFF97.exe and sr2bof97.exe) 3. Restart the computer. 4. Insert Office 97 CD, choose "add/remove components", do not touch any checkboxes, except now add HTML Authoring. It should install successfully. 5. restart the computer. 6. Insert Office 97 CD, choose "add/remove components", do not touch any checkboxes, except now add Access and the Access options you want. 7. It should complete successfully. 8. You should now be able to use Office 97 Professional normally in Windows XP Service Pack 2. If you had this problem, please let me know here if this solution worked.

Good trick, although Open Office is more powerful then Office 97 plus its free :o rp$D