Dave-H

OK, well forgetting about the Office Integrator, and assuming I have the right Compatibility Pack files already installed, and the necessary latest KernelEx files installed, which I'm pretty sure I have, what KernelEx modes do you recommend that I should try applying to which files in the Office12 folders? As I keep saying, what puzzles me is why it should suddenly have stopped working when it was working before, when I haven't knowingly changed anything! The only thing that might have changed is that the problem could have crept in when I last updated KernelEx to the latest version, but there's no way of knowing that for sure as I have no way of knowing when it stopped working as I don't use it often enough.

The "Save As..." option is there, but whether you use it on a doc file or a docx file, the only save options are docx or docm, not doc. So you can't save a docx file as a doc file. When you try to save, a message pops up "The converter could not convert the file" or words to that effect. It only offers saving as an eight character name too, but I guess that's because the Compatibility Pack is fundamentally not compatible with Windows 98! I'm not that concerned about that side of things, all I really want it to do is to open docx Word files in Office XP, something it used to do, but now doesn't.

Thanks! Well it wasn't fixed with this week's update, and it certainly wouldn't surprise me at all if it isn't actually now fixed until version 1909 later in the year!

FileformatConverter SP2 is working, it's what I've got installed! It's SP3 I can't install, at least not normally, because it says it needs at least Windows Installer 3.1.

Well I am using the latest KernelEx files, but I'm not at all sure that this is the answer to the issue anyway. Doing some more research, there are plenty of reports about that error message from the Compatibility Pack, on later operating systems, Windows 2000, XP, and Vista. The answer seems to be just to to uninstall it and install the latest version. The version I have installed on Windows 98SE is actually SP2 it appears. SP3 won't install as it needs version 3.1 of the Windows Installer, which doesn't work on Windows 98, so I don't know if I can update it. What I still don't understand is that it worked for ages, at least to read Word docx files, and now it doesn't any more, without me knowingly having changed anything! I'm tempted to try and install the very original version of the Compatibility Pack, before even SP1, but I don't know if it's available anywhere. I will try searching for it. If I find it, I will completely uninstall the pack, install the base version, and if that works I will try to install SP1 to see if that works.

That looks a lot more drastic a problem than I'm seeing! So far that one event log message is the only place I've seen that garbled font. The article I found is here. I guess what's happened is that MS forgot to change the font back from the development font for that particular message, strange though that would seem! I'm using UK English on my system, I guess from what the article says that it would come good if I changed the system to US English. I don't actually want to do that of course, so I guess I'll just put up with it unless I find that it appears in loads of other places as well, and hope they fix it with a future update.

Indeed, LOL! I'm surprised to get any more updates at all though, I wonder if that really will be the last one.

Yes it is. It should continue to receive definition updates for the foreseeable future though.

Well I'm glad you found a fix! I would actually be very surprised if Panda would have changed that setting, but I can't imagine what else could have done it either.

Thanks, sorry for the delay in replying. The event log message looks exactly the same in FullEventLogView. That message has been in Windows 10 on every boot on my system for several versions now, but it has never looked like that before! Some further investigation seems to indicate that the garbled text effect is something to do with something called "Pseudo-Localization", and has been seen before in many places on Windows 10 Insider builds. It surely shouldn't be in a release version though!

Just booted up XP again, and this time I got the yellow shield. Tried MS Update on IE8 and it still didn't initially work though. Tried a few times, and eventually it did work, and I got KB4461619 and KB4501226 (which is just a time zone update).

As has been said, check that Panda didn't install anything in Firefox. Check the add-ons list, and if there is anything there from Panda, try disabling it. Other than that, I would uninstall Panda completely, and see if the problem does go away. If it doesn't go away it's presumably something else causing it. If it does go away install Panda again and see if it comes back! That's the only way of knowing for certain that Panda is causing the issue.

I only had Panda on my machine for a short while, but I do remember it being quite similar to Avast and AVG. Have you tried going into Panda's settings and switching off all the modules as a test? These AV programs have browser "hardening" functions which could cause exactly the problems you're having. I've had to disable a couple of settings on Malwarebytes as they caused malfunctions.

Just updated to version 1903, and seeing this on every boot in the Windows Event Log! What's all that about?!

Thanks, I'll check again later.

Is Microsoft Update down at the moment for anyone else? I'm just getting error 0x80072EE7, which seems to mean that it cannot connect to the URL it's trying to connect to. I'm just trying to see if there are any Office 2010 updates this month.

I just tried again, and it worked this time! I guess it was just a temporary problem at the server end, as my connection has always been working fine. Panic over!

@heinoganda's root certificates updater just ran automatically for me (I have a scheduled task for it to automatically run every Patch Tuesday) and I'm now just getting "Network Error! Repeat download, please wait!" over and over. Please don't say that this has now gone the same way as MSE!

Thanks, AFAIK I'm using the latest versions of all the KernelEx files, but I will check that out.

The Office Integrator executable wouldn't run in any KernelEx mode. There were no error messages, just nothing appeared to happen when I ran it. If I disabled KernelEx completely, then I got a message saying that it needed a later version of Windows. I will try adjusting the KernelEx mode on the converter pack files, but it didn't need that before, it was working fine, at least to read Word docx files. As I said, it's not putting up any actual file error messages when it's invoked now, it's just saying it's a "pre-release version" and can't open any files!

Answer, no it doesn't! I couldn't get it to even run using any KernelEx mode. @actinium Is there any other possible answer to this "pre-release version" problem? I don't understand why it's suddenly failed when it was working fine when I first installed it.

Avast recommend that you uninstall MSE completely. Frankly, what's the point in keeping it? It will never work again on XP! I had the same problems that @Mathwiz had uninstalling it. The first time it just said it was uninstalling and never completed. After 15 minutes I got bored and manually rebooted. The second time it appeared to uninstall but didn't at all, apart from the entry in Add/Remove Programs disappearing. I tried the MS "Fixit" that's supposed to uninstall it, and that didn't work either, it said it completed successfully but didn't appear to have done anything! I had to manually delete the folders too, and get rid of a large number of orphaned registry entries, including services entries.

Will it work on Windows 98SE though?

Thanks, it is exactly the same file as on Filepuma, but always best to get downloads directly from the source company if you can!

Yes that is the right version. Beware that a lot of download sites say they have 18.8, but when you download it it's actually the current incompatible version. EDIT: Oh the link's gone. This is it anyway.