OFFXP: File Association and Program Shortcuts Lost for Retained Programs During Upgrade (331963)


The information in this article applies to:

  • Microsoft Office XP Professional
  • Microsoft Office XP Small Business
  • Microsoft Office XP Standard
  • Microsoft Office XP Students and Teachers
  • Microsoft Office XP Developer
  • Microsoft Access 2002
  • Microsoft Excel 2002
  • Microsoft FrontPage 2002
  • Microsoft Outlook 2002
  • Microsoft PowerPoint 2002
  • Microsoft Word 2002
This article was previously published under Q331963

SYMPTOMS

When you upgrade to Office XP programs and retain your earlier Microsoft Office 2000 programs, your file associations and program shortcuts may be removed if any of the following conditions are true:
  • You used a custom transform created with the Office XP Custom Installation Wizard (CIW) that sets the Remove Previous Version to Remove none.
  • You set the feature installation state of an upgrade Office XP program to Not Available during the installation of the Office XP program.
  • Your Office XP program installation was completed in Quiet mode with only a progress bar displayed or no dialog boxes displayed during the installation process.

CAUSE

This problem may occur if during the installation of Office XP, the Windows Installer tries to match the feature state of the new program with the feature state of the program that is being upgraded.

This process can cause the feature state of an installed program to appear as "absent" and instead of ignoring the upgrade program feature state that is not yet installed, the Windows Installer tries to remove the upgrade program. As a result, this process may cause the removal of registry information shared in common with the retained Office 2000 program and may result in the loss of the programs file associations.

WORKAROUND

To work around this problem, use one of the following methods.

Method 1: Use the NoFeatureStateMigration Property

To use the NoFeatureStateMigration property, do one of the following:
  • Open your custom .msi file in CIW, and then on screen 21, change the NoFeatureStateMigration property to Do not match feature states during the installation.

    -or-
  • Use the command line. To do this, follow these steps:
    1. Click Start, and then click Run.
    2. In the Open box, type D:\[path]\setup.exe NOFEATURESTATEMIGRATION=1 TRANSFORMS=X:\[path]\YourTransformFile.mst /l*v c:\OLXP.log.

      NoteD:\[path] is the drive with the Office XP Setup files and X:\[path] is the location of your Transform (.mst) file.
    3. Click OK.
    -or-
  • Use the Setup INI Customization Wizard to make changes to the Setup.ini file.

Method 2: Change The Program Feature Installation State

Change the program feature installation state to Not Available, Hidden, Locked. To do this, open your custom .msi file in the Custom Installation Wizard (CIW), on screen 7, click the down-arrow of the program feature you want to change, and then click Not Available, Hidden, Locked.

Method 3: Change the User Interface Level

Change the user-interface level that you use to install Office XP programs. To change the user-interface level used during setup, use the Full (/qf) switch or use the Reduced (/qr) switch.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.

MORE INFORMATION

For more information about CIW, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

http://www.microsoft.com/office/ork/xp/appndx/appa04.htm



For more information about the Setup INI Customization Wizard, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

http://www.microsoft.com/office/ork/xp/appndx/appa16.htm



For more information about how to customize an Office XP installation, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

http://www.microsoft.com/office/ork/xp/one/depb02.htm

For additional information about command-line switches that you can use to control setup, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

283686 OFFXP: Setup Command-Line Switches for Office XP

Modification Type:MinorLast Reviewed:2/21/2006
Keywords:kbBug kbprb KB331963
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