My mother's computer got so fouled with malware that I had to format the drive and rebuild her system (mostly Windows XP, mail and Office 2003). Everything went fine but when opening Word a window pops up saying Windows Installer is running. Word eventually opens but it takes almost a minute.

The XP updates have been installed so the Windows Installer version is 3.1.

I "repaired" Office from the disk, no change. Then I uninstalled Office and reinstalled it. No change.

On this forum I found out about msicuu.exe, downloaded it and ran it on Office. Reinstalled. Same old thing.

I'm out of ideas here, and hoping somebody smart knows what is wrong. Thanks.

Are you opening up Word the first time as an adminstrator? The only other time I've seen this is when Office was newly installed and never run. Then when a restricted user tries to open the app for the first time, installer hoses up.

There is only one user who is an administrator.

Thanks for the input.

One other thing I've noticed is that installer problems seem to correlate with nLite. I used nLite to install the OS with all the settings in place, then changed the user name to my mother.

Jeeze, I hope I don't have to reinstall everything with the right user from the get-go.