Hi folks,

I'm having issues trying to install MS Office 2003. As it starts to install, I get an error message saying;

Runtime Error!
Program: C:\WINDOWS\system32\msiexec.exe
This application has requested the Runtime to terminate it in an unusual way. Please contact the application's support team for more information.

I've tried surfing the net to find a solution but I can't seem to find anything that works. If anyone has any ideas, I'd much appreciate you input.
Thanks.

What version of Windows?

Try copying the CD contents to your hard drive and running setup from there.

I'm running Windows XP Home edition, SP2 with all the latest updates installed.

I've just tried copying the CD to my HD and run it from that, as you suggested, but sadly that hasn't worked

What if you click the setup.exe rather than the msi which I believe is what gets autoran. Or if you are clicking the exe try the msi. Is it the same error both ways?

I've tried both of those. I've clicked on everything on the Office volume that has setup on it and sadly always get the same result.

MS-CDs are not of the best quality. Try cleaning the CD gently with a lint-free cloth. If it has scratches, use some copper-polish and rinse off with lukewarm water. Dry carefully.
Alternatively, see if you can use another CD/DVD-drive.

Thats not going to work if he was able to copy the files to his hard drive and still gets the same error running it from there.

What if the copied file(s) were also corrupt because of those scratches?
Been there, done that.
On one of my laptops I could not install XP-Pro using a brandnew DVD-CDRW combo.
Swapping that drive for a (faster) just CD-ROM sorted the problem. The DVD-CDRW has not given any other problems, and installs any other software.

Hum.. What would happen to the computer world if file copy routines were unable to detect disk read errors?

Either the CD is OK or it is a pirated copy.

It's definately not a pirated copy. I've called MS Office support and had one of their guys remotely access my PC and he couldn't solve the prob. He thinks it's a problem within my XP so now I'm waiting for XP support to get back to me... won't be happening tonight sadly.

hope you get it to work. In the meantime, use openoffice (free) to do your work. www.openoffice.org

Have you tried (re)-installing either Windows Script Host or the Windows Installer Engine? Even though it's installed by default with windows, it can become corrupt. Installing the same version over top can fix that sometimes.

See
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...B-95A22B832CAA
for WSH 5.6's installer

and see
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en
for Windows Installer 3.1 (which runs most MSI content.)

Both require Windows Genuine Advantage validation, but both may also be available from other places. Be aware of course that these other places may pack their own badware in there with the file too...

Well, had a massive three day session with MS Support and we have finally solved the problem.

Despite the error message fingering the Windows Installer as being the problem after much installing of new files etc, it turns out that wasn't the problem.

It actually turned out that I had two versions of .NET Framework installed. So we removed them both and installed just the 2.0 version and after that, it installed first time and seems to work perfectly.
The MS guy was a bit baffled as the .NET and MS Office don't use any common files but what the hey, it worked!

Anyway, I appreciate the feedback you guys gave and I hope that this bit of info might be useful to someone else in the future.