Office 2007 Installation Fails: Fixes

Several users are experiencing problems installing the new Office 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2) update, which was released earlier this week. Users are sometimes presented simply with the message “updates failed” or “The installation of this package has failed.”

Fixes

• Install the Microsoft Office System Update Download and install this file from Microsoft. It contains fixes for issues that can prevent the installation of Office 2007 updates. Next, re-attempt installation or move on the the following fixes.
• Try Windows Update If you manually downloaded the Office 2007 SP2 installation package initially, try downloading and installing the update through Windows Update instead.
• Re-download the installation file Microsoft’s servers have had issues delivering the Office 2007 SP2 installation package. When downloading Office 2007 SP2, ensure that the file size is 290MB. If it is smaller, you may have a corrupt, unusable file. Try re-downloading the file.
• Use the Windows XP or 2003 hotfix If you are running Windows XP or 2003, try using this hotfix from Microsoft that solves an issue with large installation files

Speed Up or Disable Windows Search Indexing in Vista

The new indexing service built into Windows Vista has been the subject of a lot of complaints, since it seems to kick in at strange times and thrash your hard drive. So what can we do to speed this up?

There’s two options: You can either trim down the amount of files that Windows Search is indexing, or you can disable it entirely if you never use the search.

Trim Down Indexing Locations

The best way to trim down the amount of processor time the indexing service uses is by trimming down the amount of files being indexed. For instance, if you don’t regularly search through your C: drive, there’s really no need to be indexing it.

Personally, I love the search function for Outlook and the Start Menu, but that’s the only places I care about indexing.

Type Indexing into the control panel search or the start menu search box, and you should see an item called Indexing Options.

All you have to do to remove a location from being indexed is uncheck the box. You might have to click the Show All Locations button to see some of the default locations.

If you wanted to remove the start menu indexing, you’ll need to click on Start Menu in the summary list at the bottom, and it’ll automatically navigate to the item in the tree.

The start menu indexing really doesn’t take much processing time though, so I wouldn’t bother removing that.

Completely Disable Indexing

If you’d prefer to completely disable the indexing service, you can disable it entirely by turning off the service.

Open up Services through control panel, or by typing services.msc into the start menu search box. Find “Windows Search” in the list of services and double-click on it to open it.

Change the Startup type of the service to Disabled, and then click the Stop button to stop the service.

At this point the Windows Search service is completely disabled.

Windows 7 Antivirus Compatible Software

Microsoft Windows 7 compatible antivirus software. Some people claim they are having problems with Kaspersky 8 , Trend Micro Internet Security 2009 according to a forum that relates to Windows 7 operating system. Below is a list of antivirus programs that work or are compatible with the new OS as of this writing:

Avast! (Most users have no problem)
Avira Antivir Personal Edition (No issues so far)
Eset Smart Security 3 and 4 (Working flawlessly with Windows 7)
Comodo
Eset Nod32 4 (some users reported having some issues)
Kaspersky 2009
Norton Internet Security 2009
Norton 360 version 2.0
Sophos v7.6
Bitdefender 2009

Windows7 Versions

Windows 7 Version	Starter	Home Basic	Home Premium	Professional	Enterprise	Ultimate
Sales Channels	OEM (Global)	Developing Countries Only	Retail and OEM (Global)		Volume License	Retail/OEM (Limited)
64-Bit Support	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Concurrent Applications	3	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
Mobility Center	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Aero Features	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Home Groups	Join Only	Join Only	Create/Join	Create/Join	Create/Join	Create/Join
Premium Games	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Windows Media Center	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Windows Touch	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Advanced Network Backup	No	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Domain Joining	No	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Encrypting File System	No	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Group Policy	No	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Location Aware Printing	No	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Offline Folders	No	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Presentation Mode	No	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Remote Desktop Host	No	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
AppLocker	No	No	No	No	Yes	Yes
BitLocker	No	No	No	No	Yes	Yes
Branch Cache	No	No	No	No	Yes	Yes
Direct Access	No	No	No	No	Yes	Yes
Enterprise Search	No	No	No	No	Yes	Yes
MUI Language Packs	No	No	No	No	Yes	Yes
Virtual Desktop Interface	No	No	No	No	Yes	Yes
Virtual Hard Disk Booting	No	No	No	No	Yes	Yes
Unspecified Features	No	No	No	No	No	Yes