Hey Bob--
Away from PC for few days sorry it took so long to get back. I didn't do an
upgrade. I had Office XP and I took MOS 2003 setup option to uninstall.
When I used the MSI Installer Beta to repair or add enough files to allow me
to get a 1911 error in the Office setup, that achieved exactly what I was
looking for--a way to kick Wisptis out during the install. I realize now I
would have been better off just to take away Wisptis' permissions. After I
got Office 2003 in, I decided since I had uninstalled One Note to use it's
SP1 beta, and although I backed it up, I'm still not sure all of the One
Note pages have returned--but One Note had the same Wisptis knocking at the
door, and I used the 1911 dialogue to ignore it. I think that any Office
program you'd try to put in, including Front Page would try to install it.
I did retain the setup log files, (I'm pretty sure)--because I remember
saying yes to any dialogue box on keeping them, and tomorrow I will email
them along with steps I took and the confusion I'm running into trying to
repair the old MSI alongside a new one if that can be done--I'm getting a
little confused by some of the folders. I'll post the MSI problem here.
You're right, I used the pre-release RC1 MSI 3 a bit out of desparation
because I was trying to grab at anything that would let me get Office back
in at that point, and I hoped that it would be far enough along that it
wouldn't produced any huge problems. I think the lesson there was that
good ideas from sites with several good ideas can with unsupported removal
tools can often lead to undesired consequences. And I didn't think I had
anywhere to turn for a installer "upgrade" or to download MSI 2.0 into XP
although there might be a place with a way.
I'm getting a 1719 error "The Windows Installer Service Cannot Be
Accessed"( though trying to put NAV back in (I was trying to get it
completely out of the way to maximize Office's chances of installing) so I
tried this without much success:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;[LN];315346
I tried both methods, but couldn't get the command prompt command suggested
to work for some reason.
Thanks,
Chad Harris
__________________________________________________ __________________________
_____________________________
"Bob Buckland ?:-)" 75214.226(At Beautiful Downtown)compuserve.com wrote
in message ...
Hi Chad,
The WIPTIS.exe file is indeed part of Office 2003, but it can
depend on which install choices you had and if you were doing
a fresh install or an upgrade for example on whether Office would
have been the one that put it in play. You also mentioned OneNote
and that would be a good proability as well. Since WIPTIS would
be seen as a 'shared' resource Office may also have looked at
installing/updating it if you had installed it from another source.
Did you by any chance retain any of the setup log files
(type %TEMP% in Start=Run to go to the usual location g)
from the Error 1321 runs? If so, would you zip and email them
along with a recap of the steps you took. It does sound as if
doing a disable/removal manually may have triggered MSI's self healing,
which can get confused at times 
Generally, trying to install a MS Installer upgrade would have done
a Windows version check and an MSI version check. You did mention
that you were using a pre-release (RC1) to MSI 3 at one point in
the process?
You wouldn't ordinarily need to create a different MSI, but, depending
on Office version and license may be able to use the MS Office Resource
Kit tools to create an MST (Transform).
Basically the Custom Installation Wizard is an automation of a
hand install of Office 2003 using custom install choices and the
Custom Maintenance Wizard is an automation of going through Add/Remove
Programs and Changing MS Office 2003 feature settings.
Do you recall if you were able to successfully run a Repair/Reinstall
of Office 2003 from Add/Remove Programs in the Windows Control Panel
before you tried to use the MS Installer Cleanup Utility (and do you
have the latest version of the Cleanup Utility)?
=======
"Chad Harris" wrote in message
...
Mary--
I felt badly that my wording may have sounded I meant I hoped" you Mary"
are better able to handle the next one--that wasn't what I mean't--I meant
when one of these thorny little numbers comes "my" way that I hope "I'm"
better able to handle the next one, having learned a little from this
one--I
was very appreciative that your links were really thoughtful ones, and
enough off the beaten path that I would not have thought of going to an
Install Shield KB and wouldn't have found the other one. I've been
working
hard to solve this because as you know when one of these type things
happens--that is I can't install Office no matter what I do--it takes on
an
obsessional proportion because it's more than a minor annoyance
particularly
when you need Word and Outlook badly. You're easily as articulate as I
am,
and I am plenty envious of what the MVPs and a number of other regular
posters on the Office group like Bob Buckland know and just read different
people's posts like they were part of a between the lines book.
*Fortunately, the way I did get rid of wisptis.exe now puts me in the
position of a welcome 1911 setup error that allows me to tell setup to
ignore wisptis that every single Office app tries to install. Last night
I
put in the One Note SP1 preview, and it tried to get wisptis in but the
1911
error allowed me to do exactly what I had been trying to find a way to
do--surgically remove wisptis from an Office app install by telling the
error dialogue box to ignore wisptis. *
I know now that right clicking that wisptis.exe folder in the to right
click on the file C:\windows\system32\wisptis.exe, click Properties, go to
the security tab and remove all permissions except for Read permissions
would have probably been the more intelligent and safe way for me to get
it
out of the way and not damage MSI files and jeapordize an Office reinstall
or even naming the file to .old would have worked, but I'm not sure what
that may have done to something else.
Interestingly with respect to wisptis for the tablet pen, there have been
discussions that MSFT *may* stop making Tablet PC software. I ran accross
this mention from Ed Bott's http://www.edbott.com/bookstore.htm site where
Ed discusses Lonestar http://www.edbott.com/weblog/archives/000145.html
updates for Tablet in Win XP SP2 and I hope they won't have the
problematic
CPU drain that wisptis.exe can pose.
One of the confusing things to me is that I know that the install
uninstall
process for many applications can be far from meticulous. I don't have a
clear understanding of when the Windows Installer or the MSI partners with
other installers from the developer of the app itself. I don't have a
clear
idea of whether Install Shield makes a frequent partner of the MSFT
installer (the MSI or the Windows installer) but from their site I can
tell
they make a lot of different installers and some that cost and must be
used
by developers or software engineers.
This raised a lot of questions for me--
1) What did I accomplish that overcame the Beta by downloading the almost
RTM'd MSI 3.0? I kept racking my brain as to how I could "get a new
installer" and came to the conclusion that Win 9X users could go to MSFT
downloads and update their MSI 1.0's that probably came with 95, 98, and
the
dreaded ME. But the download site says that XP already natively has 2.0
so
I wondered if I could have used that 2.0 upgrade for Win 9X to replace my
files and make a new installer but I worried that I would be rolling the
dice if I tried. Getting installer information that can be translated
into
day to day language for me is not very easy. I've tried. I also think
that
sometimes an app can be very well designed but because of time, resources
and training the installer that the developer for the app makes to partner
with the Microsoft installer may have problems and that may particularly
lead to uninstall clutter like distorted registry keys or orphaned
registry
keys that can create problems in the immediate or more distant future.
2) The Office expert I worked with wanted to try to use the Windows clean
up
utility before we nuked registry keys --many CLIDs among them and every
single Office file by hand but MSO 2003 was not listed in it's scroll down
list so we couldn't use it. That raises the question why a major MSFT
application like Office wouldn't be listed there.
3) I need to get some help understanding these tools from the resource kit
better, and sadly even if I sat down with the $60 to $70 book I don't know
if I'd come away with a clear idea.
I still wonder if there is a tool from the Resource Kit
http://www.microsoft.com/office/ork/...ls/default.htm
like the Custom Install kit that I could have deployed to repair my MSI
and
replace the missing files. I wondered about tools from the site-- the
Custom Installation Wizard,
http://www.microsoft.com/office/ork/...ols/BoxA03.htm
the Enhaced Office setup.exe
http://www.microsoft.com/office/ork/...ols/BoxA23.htm
or I wondered if the Custom Maintaince Wizard,
http://www.microsoft.com/office/ork/...ols/BoxA04.htm
I wondered if I could get help from the MST File Viewer
http://www.microsoft.com/office/ork/...ols/BoxA05.htm
I don' t really know how to use these tools even after I read the
descriptions here
http://www.microsoft.com/office/ork/...ls/default.htm.
4) When I took the cue of one of your links, I didn't have any quotes
around
any MSI files in notepad, let alone hardly any files, and I wondered why?
Thanks so much again, because if it hadn't been for your thoughtful links
I
might not have persisted in the marathon obsession to get my Office back
and
come up with the idea of an out of the box way of how to get a new
competent version of MSI that could get around the problem. I may not
have
been able to find a way to repair MSI 2.0 although maybe there is a site
out
there--I'll have to look, but geting 3.0 worked out well. There's an
example where using a Beta fixed a major problem.
Thanks very much again, Mary. I really like Office. I just need to work
to
learn much more about the components so I can realize some of its
potential.
Chad Harris
--
Bob Buckland ?:-)
MS Office System Products MVP
*Courtesy is not expensive and can pay big dividends*