Office 2000 installation causes BSOD

Just bought a refurbed HP Notebook running XP Pro 32bit. First thing I tried to install was MS Office 2000 (just need Word and Frontpage really), but on reboot the PC was crashing with the blue screen of death.

Rebooted in Safe Mode and uninstalled Office, all returned to normal.

Updated with SP3 and the subsequent Windows Updates. Created restore point. Tried again, same result. Used the restore point in Safe Mode to undo the installation.

Installed more updates and and anti-virus (BitDefender). Just went to create a new restore point, only to find the cursor won't appear in the field to name the restore point, so I cannot create one.

Does anyone know what is going on with my 'puter? It would be manna from heaven if I could get this machine running everything I need.

 

Hello Osceola,

Which version of windows did Office 2000 run under before, ie Win 95, 98, 95, 2000.
Doing a bit of searching I see that Office 2000 was meant for Win 95 and support for Office 2000 ended very early on. Strange though, XP will run Office Pro 97 without a problem. Bit Defender is a bit "thingy" and I tried it and dumped it after a day, too many problems. Panda Cloud Free is a good anti-virus program and just sits in the background until it "sees" something and then kills it.

Back to Office 2000. Perhaps compatibility issues with XP as the NT versions were different between Win 95, 98, 2000, and XP. That is where I think the problem is.

Consider going to either Libre Office full install or Apache Open Office 4.1. Both have an excellent Word program and from memory a version of Frontpage. Both office suites are freeware.

Restore Point, hmmm, have you disabled Restore Point in Services or has someone else done it before you bought your HP Notebook. Can be fixed by right click on My Computer icon on desktop, select Manage, then select Services, read through all the services running and see if Restore Point is set to other than Automatic. If it is not set to Automatic, select Properties (bottom of the small window) and set to Automatic. Close all, restart, and see if you can go all the way with setting a manual Restore Point.

In my humble opinion, seems that the existing XP setup which I assume was installed and running before you bought the HP Notebook has been messed around with by the previous owner and the settings do not reflect what you need from XP.

Good luck. We (and I) look forward to your next post to see if everything is ok.

Cheers, Aunty Jack.

 

https://www.google.com/#q=+MS+Office+2000+is+it+compatible+with+xp

according to several threads at above search site, office 2000 is compatible with xp

if you could look in event viewer for the source and id number of the crash event, might be able to find out which driver is causing this.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/266134

how to find office 2000 updates

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=14190

office 2000 service pack 3 update

 

Thanks for your reply.

I should have said that the reason I've bought the HP is because my other XP machine died. I have a Lenovo running Windows 7 64bit, but several of the programs that I really like and use a lot won't run on it, not even with the XP virtual thing. I'm waiting for the verdicts on Windows 10 before my next upgrade, as I'm not interested in touch-screens and live tiles and what not.

So it's not a compatibility issue, as all the software I'm trying to install on the HP (including Office 2000) has previously run on two XP systems with no problems at all. Both of those machines were running XP Home Edition at various stages right up to and including SP3.

Thanks for the Event Viewer tip. It says:

"Product: Microsoft Office 2000 Premium -- Error 1706. No valid source could be found for product Microsoft Office 2000 Premium. The Windows installer cannot continue."

I'm guessing that maybe a file path is incorrect. I've been trying to install Office from an external drive on a USB, where it is stored in a sub-folder. I copied it to my C: drive after the initial failure, but it is still in a subfolder, so could this be causing it to look in the wrong place for something essential?

Any suggestions appreciated, and thank you again for your help so far.

 

Seriously, dump any Office products and install Open Office.

https://www.openoffice.org/

It's free.

It's stable.

It works.

It doesn't come with the baggage and endless, usually pointless, daily updates.

It isn't M$.

 

https://support.microsoft.com/kb/253768?wa=wsignin1.0

above is for the 1706 error

as for installing office from a folder, if you mean you backed up the folder, then you cannot install office this way, programs have to be installed from an installation cd or from downloaded .exe's from the internet, you cannot copy a program to an external drive.

now if you had made an image of the drive, then it will have all the programs.

 

Thanks guys. Problem solved. I had to run the .MSI first, which I haven't had to do on previous installations, so must have been missing from the Windows install. Working perfectly now.

I meant I have the Office installation in a folder on an external drive, long since lost the original CD. But I wondered if the location on the drive might be affecting the installation. However, all good now.

I will give OpenOffice a look. After I'm finally forced to retire from Windows XP I am highly unlikely to ever use any applications which are not open source. Am actually hoping that Linux will one day meet my OS needs, as having used Windows Vista, 7 and 8, here I am jumping for joy to have a refurbed laptop running XP and Office 2000. Which doesn't say much for my current relationship with Microsoft...

Still got my System Restore issue. The text field is actually dead. Very strange, and has only happened since I last ran Windows Update. None of my previous restore points seem to have been retained. Thanks again Microsoft

 

system restore itself can be reinstalled, all points will be lost, if you wish the instructions then I can provide them, and you may have to download all the files from my one drive as I doubt the micro xp will have them all in the dll cache folder and the i386 folder.

glad 2000 is working now.