You may receive a "The feature you are trying to use is on a network resource that is unavailable" error message when you add a feature that is set to be installed on first use or when you run Office 2000 Setup (256896)


The information in this article applies to:

  • Microsoft Office 2000 Premium
  • Microsoft Office 2000 Professoinal
  • Microsoft Office 2000 Standard
  • Microsoft Office 2000 Small Business
  • Microsoft Office 2000 Developer
  • Microsoft Access 2000
  • Microsoft Excel 2000
  • Microsoft FrontPage 2000
  • Microsoft Outlook 2000
  • Microsoft PowerPoint 2000
  • Microsoft Word 2000
This article was previously published under Q256896

SYMPTOMS

When you try to add a feature that is currently set to Installed on First Use, or you try to run Office Setup through Add/Remove Programs in Control Panel, you may receive an error message similar to the the following:
The feature you are trying to use is on a network resource that is unavailable.

Click OK to try again, or enter an alternate path to a folder containing the installation package '{ADDDA8A2-EEE3-11D3-AED5-00C04F022C53}' in the box below
When you click Cancel to the error message, you then receive the following error message:
The installation source for this product is not available. Verify that the source exists and that you can access it.

CAUSE

This behavior can occur if both of the following conditions are true:
  • You applied one or more client updates from the Office Update Web site.
  • One or more Windows Installer patch packages (.msp) in the \Windows\Installer folder are missing or damaged (corrupted).
Without a viable update package, the Windows Installer cannot perform any operations on your installation.

RESOLUTION

To resolve this issue, follow these steps.

WARNING: You must reinstall Office 2000 and all Office 2000 updates after you perform steps 1 through 3.
  1. Download and install the Windows Installer CleanUp Utility. For additional information about how to download and install the Windows Installer CleanUp Utility, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

    290301 Description of the Windows Installer CleanUp Utility

  2. Click Start, point to Programs, and then click Windows Install CleanUp.
  3. Click to select the Office 2000 product in question, click Remove, and then click OK to confirm removing the product.
  4. Reinstall the Office 2000 product.
  5. Install the Office 2000 SR-1 Update and any other updates that you want.

MORE INFORMATION

When you update your installation of Office 2000 with a client update, the Windows Installer patch files (.msp) are copied to your hard disk. The .msp files in the \Windows\Installer folder are always used for any Windows Installer actions on your installation of Office 2000. If an .msp is corrupted or deleted, the Windows Installer looks to the resilient source of this .msp to re-cache another copy into the \Windows\Installer folder before it performs any action.

The source of the re-cached .msp file varies, depending on whether you run the client update from a CD-ROM or from the Internet. If you run the update from a CD-ROM--for example, the SR-1 Patch CD--the resilient source is on the CD-ROM, and you are prompted to insert your CD-ROM. If you run the update from the Internet, the resilient source is the update file with the GUID name that was originally stored in your \Temp\SR1Patch folder but was deleted when the update process was finished.
Modification Type:MinorLast Reviewed:10/13/2006
Keywords:kbprb kbtshoot kbsetup kbnetwork kberrmsg KB256896
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