Troubleshooting Office Installation and Detection Failures

Note: To see a list of supported Office Suites and related stand-alone applications, please see this list of supported OSes, applications and languages (6 page PDF). This document is updated regularly on the St. Bernard Software Web site.

Microsoft Office is more complicated to update than most of the other Microsoft products. Here are some of the more common Installation and Detection failures and their resolutions:

Mismatch Between Client Office Installation on Target System and Office Administrative Share

Note: This section consists of 3 examples.

1.) The Office Edition on the target system does not match the edition of the Office Administrative Share.

EXAMPLE: Attempting to update a target system Office 2000 Professional installation from a Retail CD will fail if you point to an Office 2000 Professional Administrative Share created from an Office 2000 Professional Corporate CD. The Office Installer .MSI filenames do not match (PRORET.MSI for the Retail target system installation and PRO.MSI for the Corporate Administrative Share). Installation of Office Client updates to this target system will fail on a Dialog stating "The feature you are trying to use is on a network resource that is unavailable."

RESOLUTION: Confirm your Office Administrative Share matches the Office target system installation with respect to Office 1) Version (i.e. 2000, XP, 2003), 2) Edition (i.e. Small Business, Professional, Premium, Special Edition), 3) Service Release Level (i.e. No Service Release, SR-1) and License (i.e. Corporate, Retail).

2.) The Service Release of the CD or Share used to install the Office Client Installation on the target system is later than that of the Office Administrative Share.

EXAMPLE: The Office 2000 Premium installation on the target system was installed from an Office 2000 Premium SR-1 CD. The Office 2000 Premium Administrative Share matches the edition of the target installation, but was created from an Office 2000 Premium SR0 (no Service Release CD). When you attempt to update the target system installation and point to this Administrative Share the installation will fail. The OHOTFIX.LOG created by the update during installation will report something similar to "Product {00010409-78E1-11D2-B60F-006097C998E7} Microsoft Office 2000 SR-1 Professional Version 9.00.3821: Admin image contains an older patch. Cannot patch. The update failed."

The key phrase is "Admin image contains an older patch." Installation of Office Client updates to target systems in this scenario will report as "Completed" in Deployment Status, but the update will not be detected as installed (green circle icon) when you Query the target.

RESOLUTION: Confirm the Office Administrative Share matches the Client Office installation on the target system with respect to Version, Edition, Service Release Level, and License type.

3.) The Office Installation on the target system matches edition and Service Release Level of the Office Administrative Share, but it is "out of sync" with this Office Administrative Share. Office Administrative Updates were applied to the Office Administrative Share. It now has more recent .MSI files than those on the target system installation.

EXAMPLE: The Office Administrative Share has been updated with the latest Office Administrative Update. The same update is being deployed by UpdateEXPERT to a Client Office installation that was installed using the same Office Administrative Share prior to being updated by the Office Administrative Update. When you attempt to update the Office Installation on the target system with the Office Client Update, you receive an error Dialog stating: "Error applying patch to file <path>. It has probably been updated by other means, and can no longer be modified by this patch. For more information contact your patch vendor." In the OHOTFIX(xxxxx)_MSI.LOG, you will observe the error "Office Installer error 1328 - (Error applying patch to file <path>. It has probably been updated by other means, and can no longer be modified by this patch. For more information contact your patch vendor. System Error: -1072807676

RESOLUTION: Create a "baseline" Office Administrative Share from the CD. Do not apply any Office Administrative Updates to this Administrative Share. Point UpdateEXPERT to this share in the UpdateEXPERT Install Wizard when deploying Office Client updates to your target systems. For more details, read the Microsoft Knowledgebase article "Updating Office By Using Client Updates" (http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/prodtechnol/office/officexp/reskit/html/Cliupdt.asp).

Standalone Office Applications

Attempting to update an unsupported (by UpdateEXPERT) standalone Office application can result in error.

EXAMPLE: The target system has Office 2000 Small Business with Access 2000 Standalone. Access 2000 Standalone is not supported by UpdateEXPERT. Installation of Office Client updates to this target system will fail on a Dialog stating "The feature you are trying to use is on a network resource that is unavailable."

RESOLUTION: Install an Office Suite supported by UpdateEXPERT that contains all the applications needed on the target system.

Account Specified in UpdateEXPERT Install Wizard Cannot Access Office Administrative Share from Target System

An Office update installation can fail if the account specified in the UpdateEXPERT Install Wizard does not have rights to access the Office Administrative Share from the target system.

EXAMPLE: Installation of Office Client updates to this target system will fail on a Dialog stating "The feature you are trying to use is on a network resource that is unavailable."

RESOLUTION: The account supplied in the UpdateEXPERT Install Wizard must:

be a local Administrator on the target system.
be able to access the Office Administrative Share by logging on to the target system and executing the UNC path in the "Run" box without requiring completion of an Authentication Dialog.

Prerequisites for Office Update are not Met on Office Client Installation

Many of the most recent Office Updates require Microsoft Installer 2.0 or later. Windows 2003, XP Pro and Win2K SP3 platforms already have this version of the Microsoft Installer. The only target systems to worry about are NT40 and Win2K SP2 and earlier.

EXAMPLE: Office 2000 Service Pack 3 is deployed to an Office Installation on an NT40 Server with Service Pack 6a. The MS Installer version is 1.x. Installation of Office Client updates requiring Microsoft Installer 2.0 to this target system will fail on a Dialog stating "The feature you are trying to use is on a network resource that is unavailable."

RESOLUTION: Confirm the version of MSIEXEC.EXE on the target system is 2.0 or later if the Office Update Knowledgebase article indicates this version is required for successful installation. HINT: You can create an UpdateEXPERT Custom Fix to perform this detection and deploy MS Installer 2.0 if necessary.

Office Component Being Updated is not Installed on Office Client Installation

It is possible an update may not be detected if the Office Component being updated is not installed on the Client Office installation.

EXAMPLE: The Access 2000 Snapshot Viewer was not installed on the Client Office Installation. MS03-038 is deployed to this target system.

Installation of Office Client updates to target systems in this scenario will report as "Completed" in Deployment Status, but the update will not be detected as installed (green circle icon) when you Query the target.

RESOLUTION: Confirm the Component being updated (Access 2000 Snapshot Viewer) exists in the Client Office Installation. The UpdateEXPERT Install Wizard provides a Warning Dialog for MS03-038 which states "This patch updates "snapview.exe" file, which is included in a full install of Access 2000. See the associated KB article for more information about this patch. Please determine whether this patch applies before updating. If the target does not have the "snapview.exe," UE will not detect the patch as installed." The Update Install Wizard displays Warning Dialogs for other updates that require specific Components to be installed in order to be detected in a Query of the target system.