win xp sp2 & office 2003 problems

I installed win xp sp2 on 2 different machines on our network. One of them had
office 2003 enterprise edition and the other had office 2003 professional
already installed on them. After installing sp2, Outlook gave me a switch
error. Excel gave the following errors:
'Files\Microsoft.xls' could not be found. Check the spelling of the
filename, and verify that the file location is correct.
Click Ok (only option) and this comes up:
'Office\OFFICE11\EXCEL.EXE' could not be found. Check the spelling of the
filename, and verify that the file location is correct.
Click Ok (only option) and Excel opens.
It is usable but it is very annoying.

I also get the following error in Word:
Word experienced an error trying to open the file. Try these suggestions:
Check the file permissions for the document or drive.
Make sure there is sufficient free memory & disk space.
Open the file with the Text Recovery converter.
If you click ok, you can still use Word, but again, it is annoying.
I'm not trying to open a specific file in Word. I'm just trying to open Word
with a new document.
We tried to uninstall & reinstall office 2003 on both machines & we still
got the same messages. We tried to change the open action of a file type
(from microsoft, ID# 207574) and that didn't work. We tried to re-register
Excel but that also didn't work. Sometimes Word won't even open. If you
double-click on it, it does nothing. If you reboot the machine, you can open
Word. We tried detect & repair. I unistalled sp2 from the computer running
office 2003 professional and Word & Excel are fine. This leads me to believe
that it is an issue with sp2.
I can't find anything specific to the problem we are having. Did anyone else
run into this or have any sugestions?

"carbon06" wrote:

> I installed win xp sp2 on 2 different machines on our network. One of them had
> office 2003 enterprise edition and the other had office 2003 professional
> already installed on them. After installing sp2, Outlook gave me a switch
> error. Excel gave the following errors:
> 'Files\Microsoft.xls' could not be found. Check the spelling of the
> filename, and verify that the file location is correct.
> Click Ok (only option) and this comes up:
> 'Office\OFFICE11\EXCEL.EXE' could not be found. Check the spelling of the
> filename, and verify that the file location is correct.
> Click Ok (only option) and Excel opens.
> It is usable but it is very annoying.
>
> I also get the following error in Word:
> Word experienced an error trying to open the file. Try these suggestions:
> Check the file permissions for the document or drive.
> Make sure there is sufficient free memory & disk space.
> Open the file with the Text Recovery converter.
> If you click ok, you can still use Word, but again, it is annoying.
> I'm not trying to open a specific file in Word. I'm just trying to open Word
> with a new document.
> We tried to uninstall & reinstall office 2003 on both machines & we still
> got the same messages. We tried to change the open action of a file type
> (from microsoft, ID# 207574) and that didn't work. We tried to re-register
> Excel but that also didn't work. Sometimes Word won't even open. If you
> double-click on it, it does nothing. If you reboot the machine, you can open
> Word. We tried detect & repair. I unistalled sp2 from the computer running
> office 2003 professional and Word & Excel are fine. This leads me to believe
> that it is an issue with sp2.
> I can't find anything specific to the problem we are having. Did anyone else
> run into this or have any sugestions?
>

I should also add that I have installed all of the Office 2003 updates as
well and this did not fix the problem. Help!

I managed to fix my own problem finally after months of researching.
Apparently some type of spyare/adware got into my registry and modified a
data value. I installed Ad-Aware and it did find spyware but quarantining the
files did not fix the problem. I backed up the registry and then I went into:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\exefile\shell\open\command and I right-clicked on Default
and changed the data value from %1 %* to "%1" %* (there is a space between
the second " and %). The spyware removed the quotes from this and caused the
issues with office & Internet Explorer. I rebooted & tested everything and my
computer is now working correctly. I hope this helps anyone who may be having
this same issue.

"carbon06" wrote:

> I installed win xp sp2 on 2 different machines on our network. One of them had
> office 2003 enterprise edition and the other had office 2003 professional
> already installed on them. After installing sp2, Outlook gave me a switch
> error. Excel gave the following errors:
> 'Files\Microsoft.xls' could not be found. Check the spelling of the
> filename, and verify that the file location is correct.
> Click Ok (only option) and this comes up:
> 'Office\OFFICE11\EXCEL.EXE' could not be found. Check the spelling of the
> filename, and verify that the file location is correct.
> Click Ok (only option) and Excel opens.
> It is usable but it is very annoying.
>
> I also get the following error in Word:
> Word experienced an error trying to open the file. Try these suggestions:
> Check the file permissions for the document or drive.
> Make sure there is sufficient free memory & disk space.
> Open the file with the Text Recovery converter.
> If you click ok, you can still use Word, but again, it is annoying.
> I'm not trying to open a specific file in Word. I'm just trying to open Word
> with a new document.
> We tried to uninstall & reinstall office 2003 on both machines & we still
> got the same messages. We tried to change the open action of a file type
> (from microsoft, ID# 207574) and that didn't work. We tried to re-register
> Excel but that also didn't work. Sometimes Word won't even open. If you
> double-click on it, it does nothing. If you reboot the machine, you can open
> Word. We tried detect & repair. I unistalled sp2 from the computer running
> office 2003 professional and Word & Excel are fine. This leads me to believe
> that it is an issue with sp2.
> I can't find anything specific to the problem we are having. Did anyone else
> run into this or have any sugestions?
>