I did a reinstall of windows xp and now cannot launch excel.  The other parts of my office pro suite is okay.  When I try to launch, I get windows installer showing up and then I get a message saying that this patch package could not be opened.  It also says to verify that the patch package exists and that you can access it, or contact the application vendor to verify that this is a valid windows installer patch package.

I don't know if this is related, but when I try to do an office update, I get an error message.  There are a couple reasons that I do know is not applicable but it also states windows installer patch files (.msp) from previous updates are missing and this may cause you to not be able to uninstall.  This may be true because when I try to uninstall or repair the office program, I get the message " this patch package could not be opened". 

Please help me,

Mitch