Error Message During Installation of Office 2000 SP-3.

  • Thread starter Thread starter James H. Fuhrer Jr.
  • Start date Start date
J

James H. Fuhrer Jr.

Your insight into the root or most-probable cause of
this observation will be greatly appreciated.

First, a basic system description may provide some context.

Dell Inspiron 8000 [laptop], configured with Windows Me,
version 4.90.3000, 256 Mb RAM, 20 Gb hard drive, of which
13.5 Gb is currently free.

The system is protected by Norton Anti-Virus 2001, which
has been faithfully updated at least semi-weekly. No
infection has ever occurred, and the last virus detection
was recorded 186 days ago.

During an attempt to download and install the Service Pack
3 update for Microsoft Office 2000, an unprecedented error
message appeared on a blue screen background, announcing;

"Cannot write to hard disk, drive C:\. Data may be lost.
Press any key to continue."

The sequence of events leading to this error were as
follows:

The update file for each Office component was successfully
downloaded from the Office Update site, and Power Point
was the first application to be installed. During the
installation, the Windows Installer requests [not
surprisingly], that the original Power Point 2000 SR-1 CD
be inserted into the D drive. Almost immediately upon
inserting the CD, this mysterious error message appeared.

"Any key" was pressed three times, with the result that
the process re-started momentarily, and once again the
same error was generated. I removed the CD, re-seated it
on the drive spindle, and the Power Point installation
seemed to complete on its own, without further incident.

Next, the Installer requested that the original Office
2000 SR-1 CD be inserted into the D drive. This was done,
and no error messages were produced. The installation
process concluded in a manner that appeared normal.

Consultation with Dell Technical Support was singularly
unproductive. The technicians insisted that my
machine "must have bad sectors on the C drive", and
insisted that BIOS-level diagnostics were in order.

Five hours [and zero errors] later, I could not obtain any
reasonable hypthesis from Dell that might explain this
rather strange phenomenon.

It is noteworthy that the Office 2000 SR-1 product was
installed at the Dell factory, and has only been modified
via Microsoft Office Updates obtained directly from their
web-based update functionality.

I should also mention that the "Auto-Protect" feature of
Norton Anti-Virus was disabled throughout this entire
process, since it is known to cause potential interference
with software installation operations.

Can you shed any light on what may have caused this
mysterious error message, and what level of concern [if
any] I should attach to it going forward?

Please advise.

Thanks very much for your assistance.

Best regards,

James H. Fuhrer, Jr.
[Managing Director - JHF Associates LLC]
 
Since the installation of the service pack was able to continue without
issue, and since the other updates also installed as expected, I
wouldn't worry too much, James.

You might run a scandisk and defrag, but if you spent 5 hours doing
diagnostics and found no errors, I'd say you're probably okay there,
too. That would be my biggest worry -- that the harddrive is corrupt --
but it doesn't sound as if that's the case.

Not a clue why you'd see that error, though. I know that's not terribly
helpful, but the only thing I can think is that the CD wasn't seated
properly, so the computer wasn't able to read the information it needed.
That still doesn't explain such a cryptic error, though. Sorry.

--
Echo [MS PPT MVP]
http://www.echosvoice.com



James H. Fuhrer Jr. said:
Your insight into the root or most-probable cause of
this observation will be greatly appreciated.

First, a basic system description may provide some context.

Dell Inspiron 8000 [laptop], configured with Windows Me,
version 4.90.3000, 256 Mb RAM, 20 Gb hard drive, of which
13.5 Gb is currently free.

The system is protected by Norton Anti-Virus 2001, which
has been faithfully updated at least semi-weekly. No
infection has ever occurred, and the last virus detection
was recorded 186 days ago.

During an attempt to download and install the Service Pack
3 update for Microsoft Office 2000, an unprecedented error
message appeared on a blue screen background, announcing;

"Cannot write to hard disk, drive C:\. Data may be lost.
Press any key to continue."

The sequence of events leading to this error were as
follows:

The update file for each Office component was successfully
downloaded from the Office Update site, and Power Point
was the first application to be installed. During the
installation, the Windows Installer requests [not
surprisingly], that the original Power Point 2000 SR-1 CD
be inserted into the D drive. Almost immediately upon
inserting the CD, this mysterious error message appeared.

"Any key" was pressed three times, with the result that
the process re-started momentarily, and once again the
same error was generated. I removed the CD, re-seated it
on the drive spindle, and the Power Point installation
seemed to complete on its own, without further incident.

Next, the Installer requested that the original Office
2000 SR-1 CD be inserted into the D drive. This was done,
and no error messages were produced. The installation
process concluded in a manner that appeared normal.

Consultation with Dell Technical Support was singularly
unproductive. The technicians insisted that my
machine "must have bad sectors on the C drive", and
insisted that BIOS-level diagnostics were in order.

Five hours [and zero errors] later, I could not obtain any
reasonable hypthesis from Dell that might explain this
rather strange phenomenon.

It is noteworthy that the Office 2000 SR-1 product was
installed at the Dell factory, and has only been modified
via Microsoft Office Updates obtained directly from their
web-based update functionality.

I should also mention that the "Auto-Protect" feature of
Norton Anti-Virus was disabled throughout this entire
process, since it is known to cause potential interference
with software installation operations.

Can you shed any light on what may have caused this
mysterious error message, and what level of concern [if
any] I should attach to it going forward?

Please advise.

Thanks very much for your assistance.

Best regards,

James H. Fuhrer, Jr.
[Managing Director - JHF Associates LLC]
Click to expand...
 
I'd mostly go along with Echo, but on the assumption that the BIOS
diagnostics checked for errors at the hardware level, I'd still run scandisk
and defrag to make sure that there are no errors/problems at the
OS/filesystem level.

So long as it doesn't recur, I wouldn't worry overly much about it.
Sometimes powerline glitches, software misfires and Cosmic Burps can cause
the computer to misbehave. As often as not, a walk around the block cures
it (so long as you remember to turn the computer off before you embark).

--

Steve Rindsberg PPT MVP
PPTLive ( http://www.pptlive.com ) Featured Speaker
PPTools: http://www.pptools.com
PPT FAQ: http://www.pptfaq.com


James H. Fuhrer Jr. said:
Your insight into the root or most-probable cause of
this observation will be greatly appreciated.

First, a basic system description may provide some context.

Dell Inspiron 8000 [laptop], configured with Windows Me,
version 4.90.3000, 256 Mb RAM, 20 Gb hard drive, of which
13.5 Gb is currently free.

The system is protected by Norton Anti-Virus 2001, which
has been faithfully updated at least semi-weekly. No
infection has ever occurred, and the last virus detection
was recorded 186 days ago.

During an attempt to download and install the Service Pack
3 update for Microsoft Office 2000, an unprecedented error
message appeared on a blue screen background, announcing;

"Cannot write to hard disk, drive C:\. Data may be lost.
Press any key to continue."

The sequence of events leading to this error were as
follows:

The update file for each Office component was successfully
downloaded from the Office Update site, and Power Point
was the first application to be installed. During the
installation, the Windows Installer requests [not
surprisingly], that the original Power Point 2000 SR-1 CD
be inserted into the D drive. Almost immediately upon
inserting the CD, this mysterious error message appeared.

"Any key" was pressed three times, with the result that
the process re-started momentarily, and once again the
same error was generated. I removed the CD, re-seated it
on the drive spindle, and the Power Point installation
seemed to complete on its own, without further incident.

Next, the Installer requested that the original Office
2000 SR-1 CD be inserted into the D drive. This was done,
and no error messages were produced. The installation
process concluded in a manner that appeared normal.

Consultation with Dell Technical Support was singularly
unproductive. The technicians insisted that my
machine "must have bad sectors on the C drive", and
insisted that BIOS-level diagnostics were in order.

Five hours [and zero errors] later, I could not obtain any
reasonable hypthesis from Dell that might explain this
rather strange phenomenon.

It is noteworthy that the Office 2000 SR-1 product was
installed at the Dell factory, and has only been modified
via Microsoft Office Updates obtained directly from their
web-based update functionality.

I should also mention that the "Auto-Protect" feature of
Norton Anti-Virus was disabled throughout this entire
process, since it is known to cause potential interference
with software installation operations.

Can you shed any light on what may have caused this
mysterious error message, and what level of concern [if
any] I should attach to it going forward?

Please advise.

Thanks very much for your assistance.

Best regards,

James H. Fuhrer, Jr.
[Managing Director - JHF Associates LLC]
Click to expand...
 
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