Office XP Service Pack 3 problems bite users

Office XP Service Pack 3 problems bite users

By Brian Livingston

Microsoft released its latest mass beta test on an unsuspecting populace when it started downloading into end users’ computers on Mar. 9 its new Service Pack 3 for Windows XP.

The update package — which at least has a poetic name — has caused grumbling by PC professionals who refer to it using some less-than-flowery language.

“The Pack was not widely circulated around the developer community before release,” says Woody’s Office Watch, an e-mail newsletter that focuses on Microsoft Office tips and tricks. Referring to reports of widespread incompatibilities between SP3 and other companies’ software (and some of Microsoft’s own software), the publication added, “This is something that Microsoft could have avoided if it had wished to, but presumably either didn’t know nor care about the consequences for customers.”

In this issue of Brian’s Buzz, I report on these problems and bring you some fixes and workarounds to mitigate the pain. I do not recommend that you install Office XP SP3 unless you examine the issues described below and carefully test the service pack on a noncritical machine that’s running your particular suite of applications.

SP3 doesn’t install if SP1 or SP2 are installed
With all of SP3’s problems, it’s ironic that one of the most common complaints is that people can’t get the dang thing to install at all. The noninstallation is iritating but saves the users from having to deal with the incompatibilities that would have resulted!

This problem is succintly described by reader Evan Katz, who couldn’t get SP3 to install on Office XP. In fact, he couldn’t even get Microsoft’s online Office Update page to recognize that his PC was lacking the patch:

• “The very new Microsoft Office XP SP3 erroneously fails to install on many standard/vanilla computer systems, including mine (HP Pentium, 1 gig RAM, Windows XP Pro, etc.). Specifically, SP3, when attempting to install, quits/aborts and gives a false/incorrect error message:
‘The expected version of the product was not found on your system’

even though it should install right over the existing Office XP installation (specifically, on my system, Word 2003 v. 11.6113.5703 and Outlook 2003, v. 11.5608.5703).

“Moreover, this error is repeated, in effect, on the Office Update web test, which likewise incorrectly states:

‘Your Office products do not need any updates’

when, in fact, my system indeed is ready for the new SP3 update.”

Microsoft quickly acknowledged in Knowledge Base article 837826 that SP3 has this problem. The company says the false error messages occur when

1. A machine has had Service Pack 1 or Service Pack 2 installed on Office XP from an administrative installation point, and
2. The SP3 update is being downloaded from the Office Update site or the Microsoft Download Center.

Two possible workarounds, the article says, are to

1. Create a new administrative installation point that contains only an RTM (released to manufacturing) version of Office XP, without any service packs, or
2. Use the “full-file” version of Office XP SP3, rather than the smaller Office Update version, on an installation point or an individual PC.

Unfortunately, the “full-file” SP3 update is a gigantic hunk of software — almost 60 megabytes. Even with code that’s this extensive, reader Katz reports that the “full-file” version fails in his environment with the same erroneous error message. Furthermore, Katz says he never installed SP1 or SP2 from an administrative installation point, which is what Microsoft says is causing the failures.

SP3 causes dialog boxes to pop up incessently
If you do manage to get SP3 to install on Office XP, you may encounter the issue that many observers consider the worst: the lack of compatibility of the service pack with major, mission-critical applications — including Microsoft’s own.

Reader Walter Wood suffers from this problem whenever he uses Microsoft Word to compose e-mail messages for delivery by Microsoft Outlook:

• “Recently, Office SP3 was installed on my system with Office XP. Now Outlook gives me a security warning every time I create, reply to, or forward an e-mail message. This warning states that a program is attempting to access my Address Book. I then have to click Yes or No to give it permission. (The end result is the same, regardless of what my answer is.) Generally I get this warning two times before Outlook lets me continue with the message.

  “I did find that not using Word as my e-mail editor will eliminate the warning messages. But then I do not have the extra features provided by using Word. I am attached to an Exchange Server, and I’m told there is a workaround that our IT department can use. But so far, this has not happened.”

In a Usenet discussion forum, PC user Larry Bohen illustrated how bad the problem can get:

• “I have a similar problem that started just after I installed Office XP SP3, only the box pops up 3-4 times for every e-mail I receive (several hundred a day).”

These repeated warnings and alerts have an admirable purpose. Microsoft is trying to make it harder for worms and viruses to send out mass mailings from Outlook. But this seems to have been implemented sloppily and without adequate coordination with vendors of competing e-mail, antispam, and hot-sync applications.

The following programs, and certainly many others, need updates to work with SP3 — and many of the necessary updates weren’t available until after SP3 caused enormous headaches:

• ActiveX applications (uninstall them, unless fixes are available)
• NewsGator (see update page)
• Norton AntiSpam (run LiveUpdate)
• SpamNet (see update page)
• IHateSpam (see update page)
• Palm Hotsync (upgrade to version 4.1.0 or higher)
• Word e-mail macros and Acrobat add-in for Word (rename or remove them, or don’t use Word as your e-mail editor)
• Some Word templates, such as PalmApp.dot (remove from Word’s startup folder)

The workaround for the constant warnings described by reader Wood, above, is either to install the free Express-Soft ClickYes program — which clicks “Yes” on the alert boxes for you — or to digitally “sign” and then “trust” your e-mail macros. You can do the latter using SelfCert.exe, a Microsoft utility that is located on the CD-ROM of Office 2000 and higher (but is not installed by default). More information is available from KB article 217221 and Slipstick.

Ten days after Office XP SP3 was released, Microsoft issued details about incompatibilities such as those described above, especially as they relate to Outlook 2002, the version included in Office XP, and Outlook 2003. See KB 838871.

Mail-merging in Word spawns database warnings
Installing Office XP SP3 is reported to cause database warnings to pop up every time a mail-merge to Word from a separate database is performed. This was acknowledged by Microsoft as a known issue with Word back in September 2003, but SP3 seems to make the problem crop up more consistently.

Every time you run the mail-merge, you see a warning such as the following:

Opening this will run the following SQL command:

SELECT * FROM C:file_name.log

Data from your database will be placed in the document. Do you want to continue?

You can place a line in the Registry to prevent the alert from popping up, as described by Microsoft in KB 825765.

There’s an error in the article, however. Where the description shows “11.0” in the Registry branch, the number should be “10.0”.

Don’t bother trying to uninstall SP3
In case you’ve already run Service Pack 3 and you’re so sick of it that you want to get rid of it, think again. It can’t be undone using the Add/Remove Programs control panel. You may be able to roll back to your old configuration using System Restore, however.

To send me more information about Office XP SP3, or to send me a tip on any other subject, visit WindowsSecrets.com/contact. You’ll receive a gift certificate for a book, CD, or DVD of your choice if you send me a comment that I print.

Changes to security situations might help or hurt you

I wrote in the Mar. 11 issue of Brian’s Buzz about three security bulletins that Microsoft released as part of its normal monthly update schedule on Mar. 9.

No major new security bulletins have been released by Microsoft since that time. Some changes to the previous situations, however, are important enough that you need to find out if the changes affect you. Two of these are described below.

New hotfixes aid users of Microsoft’s XMLHTTP

MS04-004 (832984): The patch that was released by Microsoft in the past year with the worst side-effects was MS04-004 (KB 832894), posted on Feb. 2.

I reported in the Feb. 12 issue of Brian’s Buzz that MS04-004 broke the username/password URL functionality in Internet Explorer, which many system administrators rely upon to give authorized users access to corporate resources. In addition, the patch has incompatibilities, among many other things, with cacheing in IE and programs written in Microsoft’s MSXML.

Since that time, one of the Knowledge Base articles that I linked to has been updated by Microsoft as recently as March 3. The updated article provides links to not one but five different hotfixes for five different versions of XMLHTTP. These versions are XMLHTTP 2.5, 2.6, 3.0 SP2, 3.0 SP3, 3.0 SP4, and 4.0 SP2.

For more information on this problem and how to download the hotfixes, see the Resolution section of KB article 832414. (And refresh your browser window, if need be, if you looked at this page recently and it doesn’t appear to be any different!)

Weakness affects more Outlook 2002 users than originally thought

MS04-009 (828040): In the Mar. 11 issue of Brian’s Buzz, I reported that Microsoft had rated a new Outlook 2002 security flaw “important,” the second most serious level.

Since that time, Microsoft has increased the severity level to “critical,” the most serious rating. The change is due to the fact that Microsoft had originally said that attackers could only affect users who had the “Outlook Today” folder as their Outlook 2002 SP2 home page. In actuality, malicious persons could exploit the flaw even if that wasn’t the case.

As a result, installing the relevant patch is now recommended for all users of Outlook 2002 and Windows XP (which includes Outlook 2002). The patch that Microsoft made available in security bulletin MS04-009 on March 9 still provides effective protection. These applications are also protected if they’ve been updated to Service Pack 3 of either product. (See my top story, above, however, for problems with Office XP SP3.) More info

Hot Launch makes complex tasks into short clicks

The new version 1.1 of PS Hot Launch, a freeware product from PS Soft Lab, was posted on Feb. 14, and it’s a great Valentine for any Windows user or administrator who’d like to simplify some complicated processes.

With PS Hot Launch, you can fully customize your own combination of Start Menu, Quick Launch, Tray, Desktop, and Favorites features (photo, left). Version 1.1 adds the ability to run various commands with parameters, start in various directories, and more. This builds upon version 1.0, released last fall, which enabled users to create a tree-like structure of tasks and subtasks that can be performed with the click of a mouse or the press of a hotkey.

PS Hot Launch has been rated 6 out of 6 ducks by NoNags (scroll down to the fourth item description) and 5 out of 5 stars by TopShareware, Download2You, and other review sites.

PS Hot Launch 1.1 runs on Windows 9x, Me, NT, 2000, and XP. To download a free copy, visit PS Soft Lab.

"Magnetoids" will be the next "Tickle Me Elmo"

You read it here first — well, second. A shockingly simple new toy (or is it a brilliant relaxation device?) has just gone on sale at a single online e-tailer. I predict that these shiny little ovoids, left, will take off like a rocket this year.

Magnetoids are elongated, metallic objects about 2 inches (5 cm) in length. Oddly, they’re magnetically polarized on the sides, rather than at the tips. That fact, and the strong magnetic force within them, gives any two of the skinny egglets a fascinating way of “dancing” toward each other on a table top and then singing an appealing “chirping” song that’s indescribable.

The only site that seems to have any of these li’l goodies is a gizmo store in London — Firebox.com — which is selling them for 15 pounds (about USD $27). You can visit the manufacturer’s own site, but there’s nothing there other than a minute-long video showing various ways people play with the objects. I much prefer the page on Magnetoids at Firebox, which seems genuinely excited about them. The store has posted several short videos and even has a link to a story in a local U.K. paper about one of the objects, which somehow stuck itself onto a woman’s car. She reported it to the authorities as an object from outer space. See Magnetoids at Firebox