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Why would using the Windows search function trigger Office 2003?
My brother's XP desktop (about four or five years old, HP, nothing special about it, current Avast AV) came with the evaluation package for Office 2003. He's never used it, uses Open Office instead. He called tonight while trying to search for all his .jpgs to clean some off. Every time he launched Search (Start/Search), the machine appeared to try to launch Office 2003, giving him the "attempting to configure Office 2003" dialog. He couldn't cancel that, but could stop it through Task Manager when I stepped him through it. I had him restart and try again, same thing. Four times. Didn't happen with opening his browser or any other of his usual programs. I Googled till I couldn't read any more pages, but couldn't find anything referencing anything like it.
As a last resort, I had him try to uninstall Office 2003 through Add/Remove Programs. He got as far as the Add/Remove Programs window (no file list displayed yet) and it started again. One more time with Task Manager, and the programs list displayed. The uninstall took almost half an hour.
It's gone now, everything seems to be okay. I'm glad it happened with something he didn't want to keep, and I'd like to have a clue about it in case something of the sort happens with another program. If this had been something he wanted to keep, where should I have looked for a problem?
My brother's XP desktop (about four or five years old, HP, nothing special about it, current Avast AV) came with the evaluation package for Office 2003. He's never used it, uses Open Office instead. He called tonight while trying to search for all his .jpgs to clean some off. Every time he launched Search (Start/Search), the machine appeared to try to launch Office 2003, giving him the "attempting to configure Office 2003" dialog. He couldn't cancel that, but could stop it through Task Manager when I stepped him through it. I had him restart and try again, same thing. Four times. Didn't happen with opening his browser or any other of his usual programs. I Googled till I couldn't read any more pages, but couldn't find anything referencing anything like it.
As a last resort, I had him try to uninstall Office 2003 through Add/Remove Programs. He got as far as the Add/Remove Programs window (no file list displayed yet) and it started again. One more time with Task Manager, and the programs list displayed. The uninstall took almost half an hour.
It's gone now, everything seems to be okay. I'm glad it happened with something he didn't want to keep, and I'd like to have a clue about it in case something of the sort happens with another program. If this had been something he wanted to keep, where should I have looked for a problem?
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