You may want to try booting into "Safe Mode" in order to uninstall Office 97. The following steps should help IF you're not familiar with booting into Safe Mode:

To start Windows in Safe mode:

1. Start Windows, or if it is running, shut it down and restart it.
2. As soon as the BIOS has finished loading, continually tap the F8 key until the Windows Advanced Options menu appears.
3. Using the cursor keys, scroll down to the appropriate Safe mode and press Enter.

NOTE: You will probably see several "Safe Mode" options, and you'll want to select "Safe Mode" only, and not the one's referring to "command prompt," or "networking." Also, I should tell you that booting into "Safe Mode" will yield a slightly different view from what you are accustomed, so don't worry. Your system will boot back into "Normal Mode" once you restart.

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I am having exactly the same problem and I see a few people are.

 I have a brand new dell dimension 8300 running windows xp  professional and when I attempt to uninstall office 97 with the original CD it stops responding. (  tried repeatedly) So will follow the above advice.

from  Lucimir