Can't Reinstall Outlook97

[tmd39]

(Windows98) Outlook 97 was somehow configured for Network,
instead of for dial-up modem, and though my ISP walked me
through changes, it still wouldn't work right, so they
suggested I uninstall and reinstall it. To uninstall I used
Control Panel's Add/Remove utility, clicked on MS Office
and the Add/Remove button, and got the page-full of
check-boxes that I expected to see. I de-selected all parts
of Outlook and proceeded. Uninstall seemed to go fine.

When I tried to reinstall, it had error after error
"reading" .dll files from the CD, though it was reading the
CD in general. That attempt to reinstall ultimately failed,
so I tried again, and this time instead of the page-full of
check-boxes, it took me through the whole Office Install
routine, assigning a new product number and everything, and
it STILL didn't work, still claimed it couldn't read a
whole bunch of .dlls and even outlook.exe, although it read
and installed a lot of other files just fine, as I kept
clicking "Ignore" to get through it. At the end, I got an
error with no "Ignore" option, and had to close out with
the install incomplete.

I used Windows Explorer to examine the CD and could see and
copy the Outlook files to the Office folder, but that's not
really installing, and running Outlook.exe after that got
me lots of errors.

What could be going on? Could there be a programmatic reason
for the claimed inability to read those files from the CD?
Can one download just Outlook97 from somewhere? Could there
be a registry setting that needs to be changed? Might I
need to uninstall the whole Office?

Please be thorough with your answer - include HOW to do
whatever you recommend doing.

Suggestions so far provide help removing Office so I can do
a clean reinstall - Great to have if that's really what I
have to do, but does anyone think there's any way to tackle
just the Outlook part of the problem?

Thanks!

[MaryJ]

are you using a virus scanner? it almost sounds like you have a virus.

did you ever install the SR patches?

uninstall office if listed in the add/remove programs applet. delete hte program filesoffice folder. delete the entire registry tree under office.
there at least two branches...
*SoftwareMicrosoftOffice

[tmd39]

In fact, this is about a friend's 'puter, and no, she hasn't been using a virus-scanner, and no, she hasn't installed any of hte SR stuff. I'll have her update and run her anti-virus stuff next. I'm a little mystified about the SR situation - I know WOW covered all the patches as they came out, and there always seemed to be some kind of problem, so now I don't know what to look for or where to find it, this long after MS moved on to the next version. Any help with that, or suggest which forum covers it?

Would it make sense to try upgrading her Outlook to 98? I think I understand that doing so creates complications if you have to install SR's afterwords?

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