Problems after upgrading from Office Premium 2000 to Office 2007

I just installed the Microsoft Office 2007 Small Business as an upgrade to
Microsoft Office 2000 Premium on Windows Vista Home Premium.

The installation seemed to go just fine, however, every time any office 2007
application (except Outlook which just 'magically' stopped doing it) opens I
get "please wait while Windows configures Office Small Business 2007..."
Excel gives me an error about stdole32.tlb (for me it only says stdole32.tlb
and an ok button. Nothing about not being registered).

Tons of articles on-line say that having two versions of Office installed on
Vista might be causing the problem...so.....I uninstalled Office 2000 Premium
and then ran the repair feature on the Office 2007 CD but the Office 2007
programs are still throwing up the "please wait" windows. As this takes 3 -
5 minutes every single time I try to open one of these programs, it is
driving me BONKERS! Once I get past this installer problem, the programs
seem to work fine.

Also, when I go into Set Default Programs in the Control Panel, the only one
of the new Office 2007 programs that shows up is Outlook so it's obvious that
Windows doesn't 'think' that the other programs (the ones throwing up the
installer) are, in fact, actually installed.

I thought I would do a clean install of Office 2007 but I purchased the
upgrade so I have to have Office 2000 already installed for it to work. On
advice from another forum, I tried uninstalling both Office 2000 and Office
2007 and then only reinstalling Office 2007, however, I'm still experiencing
the same problems (except NOW Outlook is ALSO running the installer at each
initiation). If there's a
problem with upgrading, you'd think that Microsoft would have come out with
some sort of patch or, at the very least, a tech article that tells how to
SOLVE the
problem but I can't seem to find one.

If anyone knows of a way to fix this issue, I would GREATLY appreciate your
response.

THANKS!