Last week I get a call from our packaging manager telling me his email is bombing out so I go out to have a look. The basics: Windows XP Pro, MS Outlook 2003 pulling email from an ISP through POP3... pretty basic...
So, I check out the computer. Sure enough, Outlook starts up, downloads a few emails, then bombs out. My first thought is the PST file. I run the repair routine on it and check it to make sure it hasn't gotten too big. That all checks out. Maybe there is something corrupted in one of the emails causing Outlook to crash, which I've seen before. I download the emails to a different computer with no problems, so the emails themselves aren't causing it. Time to check Outlook itself...
It's kinda cheesy, but I figured I'd try Outlook's 'Detect and Repair' function, because its actually worked for me (once). That resulted in the following message...
No valid sequence could be found for the set of patches
Ugh... This kinda tells me that fixing this problem is gonna take a while, and I didn't have time right then to dig into it. So, I set up our packaging manager with a Gmail account for him to use temporarily which would access his work emails (Gmail is awesome by the way).
Fast forward to today. Packaging is closed up for the day so I get undisturbed access to the computer. The last error message referred to patches, so my next guess is to try updating the MS Office patches. (Yes, most of my job, and my life by the way, revolves around guessing). I was hoping that would at least clear the error and let 'Detect and Repair' run. That's when I get this little gem from Microsoft...
You can't really see it, but it says...Windows Installer patch files (.MSP files) from previously applied Office updates are missing from the \Windows\Installer hidden directory on your computer.
Nice, so not only is there a problem, but Microsoft is also telling me I cant uninstall. In addition, they don't mention anywhere HOW TO FIX IT. They do give a link to their tech support though... which locked up my browser when I clicked on it. GRRRRR... Like tech support would have been of any help anyways. So of course the next step it to try and tempt fate and uninstall MS Office... but guess what, there's that familiar error message again...
No valid sequence could be found for the set of patches
So instead of uninstalling, I try reinstalling over the existing files. Same error message. Hey, they told me it wasn't gonna work, so they got that part right.
You've got to be kidding me. I'm not reformatting the hard drive just to fix this problem. I spent way too much time trying to figure out ways to fix this including messing with .NLS files, .MSP files in the hidden Installer directory, and even registry edits (which I hate to do). I'm GONNA find a way to get MS Office uninstalled. At this point I'm really kinda starting to get pissed...
Finally I stumbled across this link...
http://support.microsoft.com/
Which leads to an installation clean up program called msicuu2.exe. I downloaded it and ran it, and I only selected MS Office to be repaired from the list. After that I tried to run 'Detect and Repair'. It actually ran through the process!!!... but it didn't fix the problem. I'm making progress though. At this point I decided to try running the uninstall one more time. Either it would work, or the computer would be launched into the nearest snow bank. Thankfully for all involved it uninstalled. Then I was able to reinstall successfully. Five hours later email works again and no computers went airborne in the process. You gotta love computers. I wonder if I could make a living as a goat herder...
No comments:
Post a Comment