MS Office XP Update

I had updated my version of Office XP Pro on Windows 98 using the MS Office Update site at Microsoft successfully and installed SP3 and 2 KB updates. All the about screens of Word, Excel, etc. show version SP3 but cannot find any record of the KB updates.

Today, I go to MS Office Update to check to see if there are any further updates and it claims that SP3 and KB833858 need to be installed one after the other.

OK, perhaps my SP3 update needs updating? I downloaded the SP3 update with no problems but the installation fails without giving any indication why.

I verified the "already installed updates" from the Office XP Update site and it seems to agree that the above 2 mentioned updates haven't been installed. However, several updates have been installed and are listed.

I then proceeded to download the SP3 patch itself from Microsoft and install that and it tells me "The update has already been applied or is included in an update that has already been applied." - quite right it is too.

I cleared the TIF, cookies and other Internet Explorer junk and rescanned with no difference.

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Two questions:

1) How do I ensure that the MS Office Update site shows (what I believe is) the correct configuration of my Office XP products?

2) How do I determine from my PC what Office XP updates are really installed?

 

Maxwell: Dumb question. Did you also download the update engine, and then try installing? I updated my officeXP 2002 with no problem.

 

The update engine (version 11.0.5626) was downloaded and was used successfully to download and install SP3 and 2 KB patches previously.

I have reviewed the article that goes with KB833858 and I can verify manually that this patch is installed from the version numbers of the files installed.

I have performed an Office repair and nothing changed.

I think the problem is somewhat similar to the Windows Update problem discussed here: http://www.majorgeeks.com/vb/showthread.php?t=34414 There is a similar ActiveX control for Office Update which must get its information from somewhere. Either this control is broken or it is missing the information from where it obtains it from. I think the latter...

Help...

 

I have found this Office Update Inventory Tool: http://www.microsoft.com/office/ork/2003/journ/offutoolv2.htm which lists which updates you have on your machine. I have tried this and it shows only Office SP1 installed but not SP3 nor KB833858.

However, the about screens and the files show that SP3 nor KB833858 are installed.

So where are the office update tools getting their information from? and how do I correct that without a complete reinstall?

 

Have you tried this site? http://office.microsoft.com/officeupdate/alreadyinstalled.aspx?CTT=6&Origin=ES790020331033
I have SP1, SP2, SP3 and KB833858. I"m not sure but maybe you have to have SP2 installed before you can install SP3.
All of these updates are for Word 2002. Is that what you are trying to update?

 

Yes, I had looked at that site which calims to show what patches are installed. This just lists all but the two the Office Update site claims I need.

The SP3 update includes SP2 and SP1 and various other fixes.

I am trying to coerce Office Update to show what is really installed so that in future I don't have to download individual updates that the Office Update won't let me install since it claims I need SP3 first.

The Office XP product and associated files on my PC definitely show that all the patches including SP3 and KB833858 are installed.

I'm veering towards an uninstall and reinstall, hopefully product activation (or more precisely re-activation) would be smooth, but I'm holding off to see if there is a fix.

Recalling the events to determine what may have caused this after I had suscessfully updated and patched. I can only think that enabling Office XP on the other accounts on this same machine reset the information that the non-Office tools use to determine what is installed.

 

Maxwell: I have run out of ideas.
Your last paragraph on your post of yesterday, "Recalling the events to determine---etc." may be the reason as you inferred. I just don't know.
Sorry I couldn't help you with this.

 

Update - fixed.

I bit the bullet and uninstalled Office XP and reinstalled it then went to Office Update and downloaded and installed all the updates with no problem. Using Office update now correctly shows that I have SP3 installed and the Office products' about screen shows the same.

 

Maxwell: How about the reactivation? Did that give you any trouble?
Glad to hear you got it fixed.
You know....if thy right eye offend thee...etc.

 

Reactivation was not a problem, in fact I never saw anything, but the products work perfectly fine. I did have my concerns about reactivation and whether it would prevent me from a) reinstalling or b) detect that the product was already activated and hence not reactivate. I realised that it didn't matter in either of these cases since I could revert the system back to a restore point using Norton Goback if I messed up.

Given the animated discussions I've seen about activation I never got any indication about activation other than the menu option to activate my product, which I did and which tells me that the product is already activated both times as I recall. So I guess that it isn't a problem.

I have a feeling that the issue was caused by installing Office under my account and upgrading then "installing" on the other accounts. This time I did the uninstall and reinstall on my account, checked that it worked on all accounts then updated on my account only. I then reverified that the update had taken place correctly by examination of the product on my computer and reverified that Windows Office Update corroborated this.

Note the product has to be installed on each account on the one machine separately due to a known feature of the product in that the registry keys are set-up on a global and a per user basis. There are some discussions about this "feature" out there.