MS Office XP problems after drive replacement

[Dickster]

I just had to replace a hard drive because the old one was failing. I copied the entire XP operating system partition using a copy utility and the system is up and running but I am having problems related to MS Office XP.

Problem #1: Starting up Outlook, I get an installation pop-up box saying "Preparing to install.." then an error message. When I try to check mail messages it says "The operation failed."

Problem #2: When I attempt to repair Outlook by inserting my Office installation cd, I get the error "This 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."

Problem #3: Some of the fonts in Internet Explorer are now italicized.

[jseidel]

Best to remove the Office suite in Add/Remove programs. . . . then reinstall it.