Installer problem

[ardi]

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.

[MrGuy]

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.

[ardi]

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.