Advertised shortcuts (Office 2007)

[Dannim]

Issue: Clicking on any Office shortcut in the Start Menu will result in the Windows Installer coming up and attempting to repair/reinstall an Office component before erroring out with a bad path.

The latest instance of this that I've come across was Windows 7 SP1 with Office 2007.

- Launching any Office document/sheet will result in the same dialog Window coming up (same for Outlook).
- Repair from appwiz unsuccessful, flashes an error and then disappears (no eventvwr error)
- This customer did not have the installation media to attempt a repair with
- System restore was turned off so no restore points

No malicious software was found on the machine (TDSS, Roguekiller, Hitman, MBAR, aswMBR)

I've seen a similar issue to this relating to ddexec so I modified the HKCR\Word.Document8 and 12, Excel.Sheet8 and 12\shell\open by removing the ddexec key and modifying the default value to "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\EXCEL.EXE" /e "%1" (program depending) from /n. I can now open any document/sheet without issue. However, the Start Menu shortcuts will still result in the Windows Installer coming up.

Some files were missing from the Office entries in Windows\installer ({91120000-00CA-0000-0000-0000000FF1CE}) so I copied those over from another machine with Office12 (2007) with no change.

I've used shellexview to disable any 3rd party Context Menu items and the same issue occurs.

Normally created Office-shortcuts work without a problem. I'd really like to determine what is causing the issue with the Advertised shortcuts and how to fix it rather than modifying the above registry entries as a workaround.

[Shane]

Not having the install media is a problem.

The shortcuts in the start menu are not normal shortcuts. They are application shortcuts, if you go to the properties you will see they have no command of what they run.

What would be easiest and the fastest is to go to the folder of MS office and right click on each exe you need and go to send to, desktop create shortcut. These will be the old normal short cuts.

Then rename each short cut as you need and replace the ones in the start menu with those

Shane

[Dannim]

Yep, I'm aware they're not normal shortcuts, that's why I specified "Advertised" shortcuts. 

And as I mentioned in my post there is no issue with the normally created shortcuts.  However, there are drawbacks.  For instance the Advertised shortcuts keep a history of recently opened files associated with whichever program.  And without the registry modifications I mentioned above if you tried to open a doc/xls directly it would results in the same Windows Installer prompt as opening one of the Advertised shortcuts.

Most likely a repair or reinstall would fix the issue, but in the situations where that's not possible I'd like to have a fix rather than an workaround.  If you (or anyone else) can think of something else to try towards that end it would be appreciated.

[Shane]

Thats the thing with MSI installs. When MSI breaks for that install it is a nightmare.

One tool I use to remove things from MSI when they get stuck is this tool

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Security/Secure-cleaning/Windows-Installer-CleanUp-Utility.shtml

This comes in handy when a MSI program will say it is already installed when it isnt, you use this to remove it from the MSI list and then you can install it again. Or when you have a program always opening up and MSI trying to replace files, again you can remove it from MSI to keep it from happening

Shane

[Dannim]

Yep, I'm aware of that tool and use it frequently.  Not sure how that info applies to the stated goal though.

Say it with me, "I don't know". 

[Shane]

The advertised shotcuts have to do with MSI. The MSI for the install is really screwed up.

The normal fix is to uninstall office, then use the tool to remove office from MSI and then reinstall office and it would be back to normal.

But without the office setup and the problem being in MSI you cant do much

Shane