Just a follow-up on this thread for any who may be interested to know the
outcome, as finding the final solution took place offgroup.
In the course of troubleshooting I dug around in the basement of all the
files and trees of the PC, not really knowing what the heck I was
looking for. I accidentally stumbled onto a file named msievent.log in
C:\Windows. Being desperate to find any clue at that point, decided to
open the file in Notepad, and there was a very long, detailed list of
all kinds of events, including the results of each, dating back to about
March this year up to 12/08/03. The list included various events for the
attempted uninstall process of the past several days. I cropped the log to
just the events since 12/01/03 and sent it to Dirk for him to review, as I
had no clue what was what. He found the following:
-------------------------
12/6/2003 17:28:50 (Error ) Product: Microsoft Office XP
Professional -- Error 1336. There was an error creating a temporary file
that is needed to complete this installation. Folder: C:\Config.Msi\.
System error code: 82
------------------------
Now...we had a clue..at least we then knew 'where' it was trying to create
the temporary file. When I hunted up the Config.Msi folder and checked the
files, there were 32,137 files! And, all but two of them were Type RBF
files, the 2 were Type RBS files..?? Not recognizing them as necessary
system files, Dirk suggested I rename the folder and try the uninstall
again. And, just to have some idea what we might expect if there was some
problem after renaming the folder, I went to the WinME ng and asked what
these files might be related to. Turns out they are a just a massive
overgrowth of log files from the Norton Utility System Doctor, which I had
installed a few months ago in conjunction with a pending partitioning
project. A WinME MVP told me to just go ahead and rename or delete the
entire folder and reboot, then try the uninstall of the 2002 and 2000 again.
I renamed the folder, rebooted and tried the uninstall again. BINGO! Worked
like a charm.. ;-))
Once the uninstall of both the 2002 and 2000 was done, I deleted the
Config.Msi folder, ran the Eraser2k, and then a couple of extra utilities.
One is the offclean.exe, which is on the CD for 2002, and the other is
offcln9.exe on the 2000 CD, both compliments of Joan Wild. These extra
utilities were ultimately of great value, as the one for 2000 alone cleared
out a lot of residue that freed up 'huge' chunk of disk space!
I then reinstalled just the OXP without the 2000 and all programs and
all documents in each are working as they should. I no longer have the
mouseover, macro, and command button problems on the database forms.
I'll leave the technical information to Dirk....I'm just the scout..<g>
My sincere thanks, Dirk, for all your valuable time and assistance in seeing
this to a positive solution, and to Joan for providing the very important
additional clean up utilities information. I truly appreciate it very much.
Very best regards,
Jan