VPN 3.6.3 Client install corrupts MS Office

[supermonkey]

I couldn't find any reference to this and I don't know if anyone else has seen this issue. We recently upgraded from VPN client 3.5 to 3.6.3

Many of the laptop users in the field were sent the update on CD.

After a successful uninstall of VPN 3.5, and a successful install of VPN 3.63, the user complains they cannot open any Office application. The user receives the error message, "Problem with Shortcut." after hitting okay the user receives a second message stating, "The patch package could not be opened. Verify that the patch package exists and that you can access it, or contact the application vendor to verify that this is a valid Windows Installer patch package." The system is unable to uninstall OR reinstall Office from Add/Remove Programs as the the same error message is displayed.

We haven't been able to nail down the specific source of this issue and the fix we use in the meantime is lengthy and not desirable for remote users:

Uninstall all instances of VPN and reboot.

Run the Microsoft Installer Clean-up Utility msicuu.exe and reboot

Delete the following Registry keys, then reboot again:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Classes\Installer\Products\904000001E872D116BF00006799C897E\Patches

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Classes\Installer\Patches

Bring Office up to the most current SP

In Add/Remove Programs, uninstall Office completely and reboot

Reinstall Office

Reinstall VPN

This is on Windows 2000 and MS Office 2000.

[beth-martin]

This is pretty strange... I inherited a network with a large number of clients but can't remember facing this problem. I have one suggestion though. I'm guess you need to be logged in as Admin when installing the vpn client software. Would it be possible for you to uninstall and reinstall the client software, whlie logged in as the Administrator. I feel that things should work just fine then.

[supermonkey]

All the installs are performed with admin rights.

I have since figured out this problem. It seems to be an issue with the windows installer data not being migrated from version 1.x to version 2.x

Running the file msiregmv.exe moves the 1.x installer data to 2.x and fixes the issue with office. This is the link to the article that led me towards this fix. Though the article isn't specific to my issue, it was close enough symptom-wise to lead me to the resolution:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb%3ben-us%3b324906