Office completely broken: needs powerpnt.msp

[LudoA]

Hi all,

A few days ago I launched the setup.exe of Microsoft Office 2007 on a Windows XP Pro which already had Office 2003 Pro installed. While I thought the setup was simply taking very long to load, it was actually installing Office 2007 without asking me any questions or telling me so.

So I ended up with Office 2007 installed, without wanting it (I simply wanted to have a look at the programs it included (e.g. infoPath, etc).

Luckily (or so I thought) the computer had System Restore configured, so I simply restored the system to the moment before the installation of Office 2007. This indeed removed Office 2007, but also left me with an Office 2003 which is completely broken. If I go to "add/remove software", I can't modify or remove Office 2003, because it wants "powerpnt.msp" and can't find it. It asks me for powerpnt.msp when I launch one of the office programs (even Word, not only powerpoint), and since I can't find it, it doesn't want to start anything. So I thought I'd reinstall Office 2003, but even that asks me for powerpnt.msp. I can't do anything at all!

I've looked for powerpnt.msp: I've extracted the .cab files which come with Office 2003's CD, I've unpacked the MSI's, the EXE's, the Service Packs,... but can't find powerpnt.msp. And I can't think of any other solutions, everything I've tried asks me for powerpnt.msp.

Has anyone seen this before? I couldn't find anything useful through google. Does someone have any idea where I could for powerpnt.msp? I'd really appreciate the help, as my g/f needs Office to work on her pc, and Office 2007 isn't an option as the interface has changed completely and she's not really good with computers. Plus, when I want to search using explorer or even when I start Internet Explorer 7, it also asks me for powerpnt.msp. After cancelling that request, those applications do work, but it's very annoying.

I've been trying for a few days now, but can't find any solution. Can someone point me to a solution or to powerpoint.msp?

Thanks *a lot*!

[-pops-]

These any use?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929060

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/279299

[AlanHo]

Also check here

[LudoA]

Thanks a lot! I've got three different "powerpnt.msp" files now, hopefully it'll accept one of them. I'll try it in a few hours when my g/f comes home with her laptop.

With a bit of luck it'll work and won't ask for a slew of other files after I've fed it this one.

Thanks for the help, I'll let you know how it works out!

[LudoA]

Thanks again for all your help. Unfortunately, it didn't want any of the powerpnt.msp's I had. I used MSPs from KB929060, KB923091 and KB933669.

Since the powerpnt.msp seems to come from updates, I'm wondering if maybe uninstalling all installed hotfixes for office 2003 would help? Assuming I can identify & uninstall them, that is. Maybe that's a stupid idea... I just have no idea what caused this problem.

I'm not sure how I can use the logfiles thing, to be honest.

Does anyone have any other ideas how I could fix this? Should I just keep trying .msp's? Possibly it wants the powerpnt.msp from the base install (if there is such a thing) or from a service pack, which I can't seem to find when I unpack the base install files or the service pack.

Any suggestions are more than welcome, as I'm kind of desperate by now :/

Thanks!

[AlanHo]

I assume you lack a complete backup (like Ghost or Acronis) you could restore.

Otherwise, you could spend the rest of the month trying various things. A short-cut would be to bite the bullet, reformat and reinstall windows and your software (having backed up your data first)

I can recall many moons ago spending three days wrestling with an intransigent computer before I gave up fiddling started with a clean hard drive and did a fresh install. Six hours later all was sweet and lovely again. I then invested in Acronis and take weekly backups to avoid a repetition of the trauma.

[LudoA]

I assume you lack a complete backup (like Ghost or Acronis) you could restore.

Otherwise, you could spend the rest of the month trying various things. A short-cut would be to bite the bullet, reformat and reinstall windows and your software (having backed up your data first)

I can recall many moons ago spending three days wrestling with an intransigent computer before I gave up fiddling started with a clean hard drive and did a fresh install. Six hours later all was sweet and lovely again. I then invested in Acronis and take weekly backups to avoid a repetition of the trauma.

Unfortunately, I don't have images I can restore, no. I would've thought that System Restore would diminish the need for this.

About formatting and starting over, the thing is that this is a corporate laptop, so I don't have cd's, licenses, etc. for all the software. So starting over isn't even an option, unfortunately. Seems I'm SOL.

One thing I might try is simply delete Office 2003 manually, and see if I can reinstall it afterwards. It's a bit difficult to locate all the files it might've planted in the system, though. And doing that might demolish it completely, while right now I still have hopes of fixing this mess. Thinking about it, a *lot* of things went wrong here because of microsoft's faulty software: office 2007 installing itself automatically, system restore not working correctly, office 2003 depending on a powerpoint package to be able to modify and even delete itself,... Quite dissapointed.

I'm surprised no one's experienced something similar before...

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

Have you tried reinstalling Office 2003 from the Office 2003 CD-ROM? That *should* allow a repair install of Office 2003.

...because of microsoft's faulty software: office 2007 installing itself automatically, system restore not working correctly, office 2003 depending on a powerpoint package to be able to modify and even delete itself,... Quite dissapointed.

That's a rather strange thing to say; I understand that you did run the Office 2007 setup? Naturally this will upgrade your current Office installation to 2007. What did you expect would happen...?

System Restore will *not* restore application software; only Windows components. To restore other data you need your own backup, e.g. Windows Backup or 3rd-party backup tools.

[LudoA]

...because of microsoft's faulty software: office 2007 installing itself automatically, system restore not working correctly, office 2003 depending on a powerpoint package to be able to modify and even delete itself,... Quite dissapointed.

That's a rather strange thing to say; I understand that you did run the Office 2007 setup? Naturally this will upgrade your current Office installation to 2007. What did you expect would happen...?

System Restore will *not* restore application software; only Windows components. To restore other data you need your own backup, e.g. Windows Backup or 3rd-party backup tools.

I expected Office 2007's setup to ask me whether I indeed wanted to install it, to prompt me for an EULA, and to ask me which components (e.g. Access, OneNote, InfoPath,...) I wanted to install. And if it was going to do it all automatically, and mess up my current Office 2003 installation in the process, I definitely wanted Office 2007's setup to tell me so.

Thanks for clearing up System Restore for me. OTOH, it did remove Office 2007 completely...

Have you tried reinstalling Office 2003 from the Office 2003 CD-ROM? That *should* allow a repair install of Office 2003.

Yes, bizarrely enough, it also prompts me for powerpnt.msp!