Susanne Dansey’s Blog

So here I am, Saturday afternoon installing the B2TR on my home machine (in between doing the washing and tidying the house). Please don’t try installing the update on a live machine during working hours - you risk a relapse of madness…

If you are one of the lucky candidates who installed with no problems then well done you. If you are like me and have spent longer than is deemed healthy on this then let me give you a little insight into my ‘adventure’.

I thought I would talk to a few Microsofties before installing the Refresh and they told me to uninstall my existing copy of Office 2007 (Beta 2) before I start. Good idea, except that this is what I experienced:

• Uninstalled Office 2007 Professional Plus (left OneNote in place)
• Intalled Refreshed Software

and… nothing…

Read Tim’s post which says “prior to applying this Beta 2 Technical Refresh update, you must have installed the Beta 2 version of the associated 2007 Office system product.” Good ol’ Tim…

• So I go to reinstall Office 2007 Professional Plus and am greeted with error 2711 and (graphicsfiletrscdrfilesintl_1033)
• I browse the web for an answer and find the KB - the answer and the Windows Clean Up program didn’t help…

Found a discussion forum and saw that others were getting a similar problem but with a different program - the culprit? OneNote (so it seems)

• Now I uninstall OneNote and Install Office 2007 Professional Plus - hoorah! success! and the Refresh works too!
• I also installed Windows Desktop Search which integrates with Outlook and also replaces the Windows dog (aka ’search companion’) in the search program… 

So what about OneNote?

• I go to install my favouritist program (after Outlook) and still get the same error…

Looks like I’m not the only one either and he’s had to go back to installing OneNote 2003 - noooooooo! I am not touching my working machine (I already broke that before with IE7 - which I fixed*) with B2TR until someone finds the answer.

So I enlisted the help of a friend (thank you friend!) and we are working on trying to resolve it. This is what we have tried so far:

Note: I take no responsibility for the outcomes that occur as a result of you following what I have attempted.

*FIRST, MAKE A BACKUP*

Attempt #1

Disable the graphics filters via the ‘custom’ install (I get a new error if I do this - “Microsoft Office OneNote 2007 (Beta) encountered an error during setup. Error 2711. An internal error has occurred. (TCWord97FilesIntl_1033)” - great! Not.

Attempt #2

It seems that Error 2711 usually occurs because you have a previous or newer version of Office 12 installed on your machine. You have to check that all builds of O12 products that do not match the build number of the product being installed are removed from the machine so that you can then attempt the install again.

I understand that in some cases if a newer build has been run over an older build, that after removal of the older builds there is still data remaining in the registry and the MsoCache from the older build. If this is the case, follow these steps to clear out the information:

1. Open regedit
2. Browse HKLM\software\microsoft\office\delivery\sourceengine\downloads
3. Remove any key that end in OFF1CE}
4. Open C:\MsoCache\All Users
5. Delete any folder than ends in OFF1CE}-C

If the steps do not clean up the machine so installation is successful then you may still have a rogue Msi or two from a previous installation on the machine. To remove these left over Msi’s do the following:

1. Go to Start > Run. Type ‘installer’ and hit enter
2. In the list of applications that appear, add the subject column and sort by it (go ‘view’, ‘choose details’ and select ’subject’ if in XP)
3. Look for any items that have a subject beginning with ‘Microsoft Office’ and ending with ‘2007 (Beta)’. - note which ones you find (if any)
4. Uninstall any matching applications by right-clicking the associate MSI and selecting uninstall

This didn’t work for me and neither did moving the files into a temporary folder and reinstalling (both with and without the graphics filters).

So as I plod on in search of a solution that works for me, I potter around Office 2007 Beta2TR…

What’s new with the refresh that I have found so far?

• Glossy Product Icons
• The programs load quicker

I am working on the rest… although I do know that according to Jensen Harris, the Office team have made nearly 1000 individual improvements to the content in the ribbon, find out more here or why not go count them yourself?

If you’re in the mood to read up on the new Office 2007 system you can buy it here (thanks Darren for the link).

I’m off to take my real ’search companion’ for a walk now… he’s bored listening to me swear at my machine (yes Vlad I did think of testing it via VPC but I haven’t got it on this machine - don’t you love it when an Exchange MVP asks you a question knowing full well you know what they’re hinting at…?)

Don’t forget, if you get any problems installing Office 2007 and you get the opportunity to send the error reports, please do so, as hopefully they’ll be waiting at the other end for it!

Attempts #3+ to follow…

*yes I am a techie-in-training