Uninstaller overcomes Office 2007's Error 1310

At or near the top of the list of aggravations for new PC owners is the trial version of a program that came preinstalled on the system refusing to uninstall once the trial period expires. The irritation really peaks when the product in question is from Microsoft.

Before I could install a bought-and-paid-for copy of Outlook 2007 on my laptop, I had to uninstall the trial version of Office Enterprise 2007 that was preinstalled on the machine's hard drive when I bought it several months ago. Very early in the uninstall process, an alert popped up reporting Error 1310 and instructing me to verify that I had access to a certain directory.

An attempt to uninstall the trial version of Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007 generated an error message.

(Credit: Microsoft)

I decided to try the uninstall again using the free Revo Uninstaller utility. In addition to cleaning up the Registry entries, files, folders, and other refuse that the program's own uninstaller misses, Revo Uninstaller finds and deletes junk files on your PC and performs other cleanup duties.

In the case of the balky Office 2007 uninstaller, Revo Uninstaller appeared to help, though I had to click Retry about 352 times during the successful removal. Each time I clicked Retry, Revo Uninstaller reloaded and the green Office uninstall utility progress bar crept almost-imperceptibly from left to right.

Finally, the Office uninstaller reported that the program had been removed successfully. That's when Revo Uninstaller went to work, reporting that the trialware had left behind 533 Registry items and 29 files and folders. I chose Select All in each case, and then pressed Delete to remove them for good.

The free Revo Uninstaller utility identified 533 Registry entries that the Office 2007 uninstaller missed.

(Credit: VS Revo Group)

Before I exited Revo Uninstaller, I clicked the program's Autorun Manager and deselected several autostart programs that had been slowing down my start-ups unnecessarily.

Revo Uninstaller's Autorun Manager lets you trim the number of programs that start with Windows.

(Credit: VS Revo Group)

Now that I've managed to uninstall a Microsoft program I didn't ask for, don't want, and couldn't get rid of, I can now install the Microsoft application I paid more than $100 for. Why would anyone choose to do business with such a company?

[Jahntassa]

I have to say i've never had a problem uninstalling the Office trial from new laptops by using the 'Uninstall a program' via the Vista Control Panel. In fact, most of the searches for this error pertain to installing Office rather than Uninstalling.

i would hazard to say that whoever the manufacturer of your laptop is bungled the install image for it. But that's okay, it's easy to bash Microsoft on the internet.

[doreilly]

Jahntassa, are you saying that Microsoft isn't responsible for the products that bear its brand? I'd say it's easy to blame the hardware vendor for entering into a bogus marketing agreement with Microsoft, but it takes two to tango, and any vendor MUST take responsibility for its products regardless of who distributes them, and how. I expect the same level of service from Microsoft as I do from every other company I deal with. Is that "bashing"?

Respectfully,
Dennis O'Reilly

[cp256]

"... I can now install the Microsoft application I paid more than $100 for. Why would anyone choose to do business with such a company?" Uh, what's your excuse?

No offense intended, I just couldn't resist the irony :)

Eudora (cough, cough) Thunderbird (cough, cough) Opera (cough, cough) Pegasus (cough, cough) ...

[monkey_dog]

Actually Dennis, it is. If you get Firestone tires installed on your car by the local Toyota dealer, and the dealer doesn't tighten all the lug nuts, is that the fault of Firestone or the dealer. To quote you:
"any vendor MUST take responsibility for its products regardless of who distributes them, and how"

I'm guessing in that case you would blame Firestone because the dealer didn't do their job. You are a tech writer, you should assume the responsibility for critically evaluating a situation and placing blame where appropriate. Saying that it is Microsofts fault and they are responsible for every foolish mistake made by everyone who redistributes their product is just foolish in itself. If that were the case, no one, ever, anywhere, would allow anyone to redistribute their product.

C'mon, you took an interesting and useful article that exposed me to a product that I didn't know about and at the very last, made yourself a parody...

Chris

[jgoney]

Strike 1, you bought from Sony, who continually produces some of the most overrated, underpowered, proprietary wares on this side of consumer electronics.

Strike 2, why didn't you just format and do a fresh install when you got the laptop? You're a tech writer, so certainly you must have the know-how. I think there's some rule to where Sony is required to provide you with a physical copy of Windows in case your Vaio didn't come with a Windows disk.

[rdc1253]

Why would anyone choose to do business with such a company? OK, so why do you? Also look up Windows installer cleanup utility. I agree that it shouldn't be a chore to uninstall any program but it was quite possibly caused by the way it was set up by the manufacturer of your laptop, not MS. Regardless of what doreilly says, once the product is in the manufacturers hands MS has little control over how it gets butchered. Oh, and by the way, I choose to do business with such a company because they make the best products for my needs.

[ellrich]

this happens to norton that comes pre-installed too on vista machines

[forchezzy]

rdc1253, I agree with you. I have used the Microsoft Office Uninstaller tool (Windows Install Clean-Up) to fix bugs in Microsoft Office only cause of the Desktop Image created by my job had various issues by the custom applications that they created internally. Another notorious application that also has a uninstaller is the Norton Antispyware Uninstaller utility.

jgoney, nice catch, Sony would have offered you a recovery partition or Specific Recovery Disk for that model laptop, not a retail Windows Disk.

I think that they is already another side to this ridiculous story. All pre-installer new vista machines would have a trial version of the Home and Student Office 2007 version. No regular consumer should be able to get their hands on a copy of Office 2007 Enterprise unless it was taken from a company or via torrent. Now, Office 2007 Enterprise has all the products of the suite when any other version would be lacking a few to a handful.

Also, being a tech writer would have me believe you some knowledge about installing only the programs of the suite that you want, like maybe you could install parts of the Professional version ontop of your Home and Student Version..... Office Home and Student does not include Outlook so why would you need to install Word, Excel, and Powerpoint again. Also, there is a method of changing the serials to any Microsoft Office 2007 program in the registry, go ahead and look it up.

I'm sorry Dennis but you have cracks in this story, Write on stuff you know or lookup a little more to this behaviour than bashing your own experience.

[jesus_earl_christ]

that error ussually is caused by altering the values of the regristry keys, notice "keys" is plural. (hint). i think it also causes updates to fail to install if the serial is not changed on all of em. its a piracy protection measure. he didnt want to pay so he wound up with permissions problems which im guessing is the true reason for the uninstall. i have had issues uninstalling office07 home/student and norton both from selecting one of the progs instead of the suite. nortons notorious for this poor labeling. revo does indeed solve this problem

i dunno this off the top of my head but wouldnt an oem copy of vista ultimate have office 2007 enterprise? i mean vista ultimates supposed to include everything

[inachu1]

I have seen it where a program can't be uninstalled when the temp folder has been emptied.

pretty sad way to place items ina temp folder. BAD PROGRAMERS! BAD DEVELOPERS!

[jesus_earl_christ]

i have noticed with revo that when an uninstall fails (like everytime i hit the back button in revos popup window) i can still perform another uninstall because of how it looks for files and keys to be cleaned up. but the partial uninstall ussually causes hundreds and even thousands of errors. i had around 3000 from openoffice when i started to pull it then cancelled due to the simpsons being on.

im sorry but clicking select all when deleting the registy keys is russian roullette. it displays the path to each key, not JUST the keys. for instance, the key to the firewall permission. do you really want to delete the entire set of keys for your firewall because that would happen .
NEVER use select all when revo edits the registry. the warning they put up on that screen is not just for decoration. even if im not sober, im not that reckless