This post is slightly off my normal topic, but I thought it was an experience worth sharing.
For the past few weeks, I have been trying on and off, to upgrade the existing Microsoft Office 2003 install on my laptop to Microsoft Office 2007.I use Office 2007 elsewhere on other machines and despite its initial steep learning curve, I think its a big step forward. The version I use includes OneNote 2007 which interestingly now ships with a Windows Mobile version of OneNote. The idea is that OneNote entries can be shared and synchronised between mobile devices and host PCs I haven't given OneNote Mobile thorough usage but so far it works pretty well
When I started the setup, Office 2007 correctly recognised I wanted to perform an upgrade rather than a full install. The problem was that my Office 2007 upgrade then kept failing with the following message:
"Setup is unable to proceed due to the following error(s):
The 2007 Microsoft Office system does not support upgrading from a prerelease version of the 2007 Microsoft Office system. You must first uninstall any prerelease versions of the 2007 Microsoft Office system products and associated technologies.
Correct the issue(s) listed above and re-run setup. "
As I'd never previously installed Office 2007 this was a bit of mystery. Then I looked at my installed programs list and realised I had the Office 2007 Language Tools and Office Compatibility Packs installed from some previous Windows Updates. Great I thought - just uninstall these and life would be good. So I uninstalled these two programs and reran the upgrade. Still the same message but no indication given of the which programs were still left.
Get The Knowledge And Try Again
For a while I gave up in frustration. After a while though I decided that fixing it was more important than sleep. I looked around for some answers on the well known search engines and ironically found two really good KnowledgeBase articles on the Microsoft site -
KB article 927222 gave me all the information I needed. I had the CTP (Community Technology Preview) release of Microsoft Expression Web Designer installed. I do quite a bit of web user interface work as well as mobile technology, so I'd installed the Expression Web Designer CTP release. I really like Expression Web although hadn't really used it in anger on this machine. It was showing in the installed list, so I tried to uninstall it via Add/Remove Programs. This just launched the uninstaller and closed it again without doing anything visible. I tried again - same result. I tried the special "uninstallers" directory (Start/Run then type in "Installers") - still the same issue. The expression CTP obviously hadn't perfected the art of uninstallation! This wasn't going to be straight forward....
Let The Serious Surgery Begin
It looked like I was going to have to carve Microsoft Expression CTP out of my machine manually, via the registry and file system and so it turned out....
For guidance I looked at KB Article KB 928218. This was a fantastic article for removing any trace of pre release Office 2007 elements including Expression. The steps are too detailed to list here and not for those afraid of the Windows registry. The steps must be followed in sequence and carefully, especially the instructions on removing registry keys.
I followed all the steps that were applicable, as Expression on its own, doesn't create all the files and registry keys mentioned. My machine seemed clean enough so I tried the Office 2007 install again.This time it got a bit further. I was prompted for product keys and selected elements to install but then it failed again. This was now several hours later and my frustration was growing. By now I could think of a few more other expressions for the CTP I'd installed!
Tackling the Problem At Source
Hidden away under the Details button of the error dialogue I received, was a link to the location of the install log file. This gave a message to the effect that the install had failed as the Office Source Engine service could not be found, started or the executable was damaged.
By investigating further, I discovered that the Office Source Engine was introduced with Office 2003. It provides a way of installing, repairing or installing "on demand" features in Office 2003 and related applications. Obviously Office 2007 seemed to have some reliance on it as well. So what had gone wrong?
I then discovered that one of the steps in KB article 928218 requires you to stop the Office Source Engine service and then delete all relevant files and registry keys. So by doing this, I had effectively stopped Office 2007 from installing again!
It appears the KB 928218 article completely overlooked the fact that if you still have an existing Office 2003 install you shouldn't delete the Office Source Engine and related files and registry keys!
According to another article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base, the only two solutions for this were a) to completely uninstall and reinstall Office 2003 before upgrading, or b) to try to repair the existing Office 2003 install. I chose the repair. I retrieved the relevant Office 2003 CD and repaired my Office 2003 install. Eventually this completed and following a reboot, I could start the Office 2007 install.
Success and Then Sleep...
I selected the desired Office 2007 components and entered the product keys. As if by magic my Office 2007 upgrade now carried on perfectly! Several hours later I had a perfectly upgraded and working Office 2007 install. All my Outlook mailboxes, settings and documents were preserved.
I still haven't worked out the underlying connection between Expression CTP Web and Office 2007 System. Perhaps they share DLLs for HTML or XML editing functionality but it wasn't clear to me.
What was clear to me though, was that as much as like the full version of Expression and will probably install it again at some point, any future CTPs of anything I install, will go on Microsoft Virtual PC images in future. These can be reset quickly and easily at any point when required.
Think of all that sleep I could have had if I'd done that....