Windows 7 Office 2007 Installation havoc

[Guest]

Hello,
A friend bought a Windows 7 machine prebuilt with an evaluation version of Office. Any attempt to install her old (legitimate) Office 2007 Home & Student CD causes the desktop icons to revert to default Windows icons and to lose their operability - any attempt to click on them just starts Word and a dialog box about activation. She can't activate online because she can't get to IE any more! The problem goes away when we uninstall Office 2007. Anybody seen these symptoms before? Surely a legitimate version of Office 2007 should be installable without shelling out again for an upgrade to the prebuilt evaluation version? And why can't a find the evaluation version to uninstall it? Is it hidden in some way?

 

[btk1w1]

It is best to fully remove the evaluation copy MS Office.

A friend had problems with the install as well with an older version while the eval remained hidden on the PC.

After suggesting he run Revo Uninstaller to completely remove the trialware he was able to successfully install the older Office suite.

The free version will do the job for you:
http://www.revouninstaller.com/revo_uninstaller_free_download.html

The symptoms weren't the same but this fixed it.

 

[Guest]

Thanks, I'll give it a whirl and report back...

 

[Guest]

I'm afraid RevoUninstaller didn't help. In fact it detected fewer programs than the Control Panel itself. I reinstalled Office 2007 and then uninstalled using Revo, including wiping out dangling registry entries, but Office 2007 still caused the same bizarre features on installation.