XP SP 2 and Office SP 3

Question

I installed both these service packs in quick succession (I'll have to think very hard on the order now). But the end result is office products are unusable. I have small business office suite.

First I got asked for EULA (End use license agreement) whenever I started any of them. That was fixed by accepting EULA from administrator account.

Now Word/Excel/PPT cannot open any files - various errors - e.g. Excel tells "Unable to read file".

Word when exiting always wants to store "normal.dot" file. Even if you go through and write it once, the next time the same thing.

Does anyone has a solution?

Thanks

NemesisDB · Answer

I doubt SP2's to blame. You might try removing SP3 if that's an option under add/remove ... or you could try uninstalling/reinstalling office.

Just fyi, XP SP2, and Office XP SP3 are working fine for me

mu_100_pack · Answer

Thanks. Does not look like office SP3 got installed as removable option. Removing/installing it again is something I want to avoid if possible. I may lose something in the process, I am prone to do that.

Do U think Norton Anti-virus Corp edition (2000) Version 7.61.939 can be blamed? Again I do not want to lose that either.

BTW, the problem is only with Word and Excel. Outlook works fine after I changed the settings to use internal editor and not the Word.

The XP SP 2 help chat told me to defragment disk. That did not help either. Now they are off for the day!!!

Any help is appreciated.

schmieg · Answer

There have been problems reported with SP2 and NAV. You might try disabling that. You may need an upgrade or to switch to a different AV program.

mu_100_pack · Answer

When you say you got them working together, do you have NAV running? Which AV software do you have?

schmieg · Answer

I heard that Norton has fixes posted. I use McAfee and have had no problems with SP2 from that software.

mu_100_pack · Answer

Thanks both of you. The trick of Un-registering OfficeAV.dll from registry did it. Regsvr32 -U ' \OfficeAV.dll' And that is it!!!! Good Luck with your XP SP2 and Office SP3!!!!

JRosenfeld · Answer

There is also a new (11 September) security update for Office XP SP3. Go to Office dowmloads, check for updates. http://office.microsoft.com/officeupdate/default.aspx

Windows General

XP SP 2 and Office SP 3

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