SOLUTION: “Click2Run Configuration Failure” when Office 2010 Starter is launched

Posted on April 30, 2011 by Steve Schardein

Here’s a frustrating issue that hasn’t yet been solved by anyone at Microsoft from what I can tell. For ~~as yet unknown reasons~~ reasons I have now discovered (as detailed later in this article), occasionally some PCs exhibit an error when launching Office 2010 Starter (which is preinstalled on many new PCs). The error is worded as such:

“Click2Run Configuration Failure”

Although many solutions on the internet (even from Microsoft employees and the KB) suggest that a simple Repair install or Uninstall of Click2Run from the Programs and Features menu will correct this, executing the uninstaller actually triggers the exact same error message.

Update (June 2012): I have now been able to confirm that this problem is most often caused by the use of registry cleaners. For more details on why you should never use a registry cleaner, see my blog entry here.

This error may also occur on other downloadable versions of Office 2010, but I haven’t seen it yet anywhere else. Correcting the problem with the preinstalled OEM Starter versions is tricky enough, so I decided to make that the focus of this post.

Here’s what you do to fix the problem. First, you’ll need a special Click2Run cleanup tool that has seemingly disappeared from Microsoft’s server. You can download it here:

Click2Run Cleanup Tool

Once in possession of this tool, take the following steps to correct the problem:

First, be sure to have a copy of the required installation files for Office 2010. Make a backup of them if you don’t have access to them elsewhere by copying the following directory to another location:
- %PROGRAMDATA%\Microsoft\OEMOffice14\OStarter\en-us
Execute the CleanC2R.exe file from the zip archive provided above to completely remove C2R, including the virtual Q: drive containing the relevant install files.
Reboot the PC, then execute the CleanC2R.exe tool a second time.
Reboot once more, then execute the offcln.exe tool to completely remove Office 2010 Starter.
Reboot yet again, then navigate to the ProgramData directory containing the Office Starter installation files (they must be located in the exact directory detailed above for the installation to work properly). Right-click the SetupConsumerC2ROLW.exe file and choose Run as Administrator to install C2R once again, along with a fresh copy of Office 2010 Starter.

This should finally correct the issue. If you happen to be missing the installation files for Office 2010 Starter, you can actually find them available for download in various places. Downloading the files and installing the suite is perfectly legal as long as it was already once provided with the PC new by the OEM.

If this tip has helped you, please drop me a line and let me know!

If you’re looking for computer help in the Louisville area, look no further. Call me today and get it done right!

Donate to say "Thanks" if this post has helped save you time and money! 🙂

365 thoughts on “SOLUTION: “Click2Run Configuration Failure” when Office 2010 Starter is launched”

Amit on August 5, 2011 at 5:38 pm said:

Hi Steve
Thank you very much
So far you are the only one who solved for me the click-2-run problem,
and I looked for quite a long time (just before I got despaired, and was about to restore my computer).
You are indeed a rare top-level technician.
Thanks again
othersteve on August 6, 2011 at 12:33 am said:

Hey Amit,

Thanks for taking the time to leave your comment! It’s great to know my advice here has helped someone. 🙂

Have a great weekend,

Steve
Mat on August 24, 2011 at 2:37 pm said:

Winner!
Sanjeev on August 25, 2011 at 4:58 pm said:

Hi Steve,

Great tip. It helped me too, on my Windows7 laptop which had the same problem. Thanks a lot!

– Sanjeev
Laura on September 12, 2011 at 1:28 am said:

Thank you so much! definitely fixed the problem 🙂
Adam on September 14, 2011 at 2:55 pm said:

Excellent Post. Worked perfectly! Thanks.
othersteve on September 14, 2011 at 2:58 pm said:

Thanks guys. I’m thrilled it worked for you! I really appreciate the feedback.
Angela on September 20, 2011 at 2:56 am said:

Thanks for the help. It worked.
Tim on September 22, 2011 at 12:11 am said:

Hi Steve,
I second everyone else’s comments. Microsoft’s tech support left me more confused than when I began; yours worked. Great public service on your part.
Benjamin on November 9, 2011 at 4:39 pm said:

Steve – thanks for posting this. Will this work for Windows 7 Professional?
othersteve on November 9, 2011 at 4:53 pm said:

Benjamin,

It should work regardless of OS (Vista or 7, 32- or 64-bit).
Benjamin on November 9, 2011 at 4:55 pm said:

Disregard my previous post. I realize that Windows version is irrelevant to the Office version. However, after following the instructions, I received the error “There was a problem setting up Microsoft Office Starter 2010: This product must be installed to Q:. Ensure that Q: is unused and try again.”
othersteve on November 9, 2011 at 5:44 pm said:

Hey Benjamin,

The CleanC2R tool is supposed to remove the Q: drive as part of its procedure. Be sure to reboot and run it AGAIN after the computer comes back up. Also, make sure to run all the tools as Administrator if UAC is enabled.

Please let me know if this helps!

-Steve
Benjamin on November 9, 2011 at 5:46 pm said:

Thanks for your help Steve! I have a Lenovo X201 and my Q drive is where my “Lenovo_Recovery (Q:)” is located. Not sure I can erase that…
othersteve on November 9, 2011 at 6:04 pm said:

Oh! Wow, that’s a new one. You can probably create recovery CDs using the Lenovo utility and then remove the partition. That would fix the problem!
Benjamin on November 9, 2011 at 6:09 pm said:

Thanks Steve. By the way, nice site!
Lisa on November 26, 2011 at 3:11 pm said:

Dear Steve,

Thank you so much! I suffered for a year with slow applications thinking, well it’s free so they must make it load ungodly slow to encourage sales, and I had this Q:/ drive. Once the manufacturer warranty on this Windows 7 laptop was about up, “click-2-run configuration failure” even with repair. This worked, and it’s better than ever!
matt on December 7, 2011 at 4:12 pm said:

OMG. i have spent hours trying to solve this problem, sifting through page after page of Microsoft forums etc. Why couldnt i have found your page sooner. It works. Such a relief!! Nice one brother.
Mak on December 22, 2011 at 8:19 pm said:

Dude, you’re awesome!
George on December 30, 2011 at 5:36 pm said:

I think I uninstalled an office 2010 product out of order, so I was getting the “Click2Run Configuration Failure” when trying to uninstall other 2010 starter stuff, your fix worked for me. Luckily I found your site quite early in the ‘how do i fix this” department.
Thank you
Norwegian dude on January 4, 2012 at 4:07 pm said:

A whole evening of frustrated googling and scanning of corporate websites with a magnifying glass to no avail whatsoever.

Then stumbling across your fantastic blog post, and voìlá! Thank you so, so much for providing this excellent walkthrough – you solved the problem the rest of the Internet failed to fix. 🙂
Tye on January 8, 2012 at 11:47 am said:

Thanks Steve! You are definitely a life saver, I am so glad I came across your site after only a long search. After trying a couple of other suggestions I started to doubt that there was a simple solution, but you proved otherwise.
Jesse on January 8, 2012 at 3:51 pm said:

Steve – please help! I accidentally uninstalled the starter version and am needing to reinstall it… where can I get it??

Thanks
othersteve on January 8, 2012 at 11:43 pm said:

Hey Jesse,

As long as it was previously installed, you have two choices:

1) Perform a System Restore, or
2) Go here: http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/21441-Office-2010-Starter

Hope this helps!
Richard on January 9, 2012 at 2:39 pm said:

Thanks very much! I have an assignment due in two days and was panicking a bit! I was lucky that when I opened one of my documents it gave me the option to automatically install Office starter again so I didn’t have to download any of the files. This being on Windows 7. Thanks again.
Jesse on January 9, 2012 at 9:32 pm said:

THANK YOU! Clean up tool and step-by-step WORKED! Everything back to normal! THANK YOU!!!!!
Peter on January 17, 2012 at 7:41 am said:

Kowtow!
Malcolm UK on January 22, 2012 at 12:51 pm said:

I can’t believe this had to be so difficult. However your instructions worked perfectly.

The pain was individually downloading 33 files from Microsoft…

Thanks – I’ll certainly recommend your solution if I’m asked to fix this problem again.
Jessamine Hill on February 6, 2012 at 10:45 am said:

Just encountered this issue this morning and your instructions made it such an easy fix. Thanks so much! 🙂
kristin on February 10, 2012 at 4:35 am said:

Wow! I can’t thank you enough. You made it so easy. I’ve been trying to fix this all day and can finally get back to my report. Will definitely recommend your instructions to anyone else who encounters this problem. 😀
tim on February 13, 2012 at 12:48 pm said:

seems to work good. not sure if this is related but after the first reboot I saw some obvious pop up about spyware called “PC cleaners”. I disabled it from running on startup and everything seems ok.
Jerzy on February 18, 2012 at 2:50 am said:

It worked – thank you. But I have a little problem. The saved file Excel Starter 2010 does not seem to excel. How do I restore the icon Excel? Associate it with what? Does it also have a way?
Regards
othersteve on February 18, 2012 at 10:13 pm said:

Hey Jerzy,

The problem is, the virtualization aspect of Starter 2010 makes file associations a serious pain if they’re corrupted for any reason. It may be better to uninstall all other versions of Excel first, then wipe out Starter using the above steps and try reinstalling it again from scratch. This will likely fix the problem.

If it doesn’t, I may need to investigate on a machine I have (next time I install it) to see what the correct registry values are for the file associations. If I’m not mistaken, at least to create a shortcut you can use the following codes:

On a 64-bit system:

Excel 2010:
“%COMMONPROGRAMFILES(X86)%\microsoft shared\Virtualization Handler\CVH.EXE” “Microsoft Excel Starter 2010 9014006604090000”

Word 2010:
“%COMMONPROGRAMFILES(X86)%\microsoft shared\Virtualization Handler\CVH.EXE” “Microsoft Word Starter 2010 9014006604090000”

On a 32-bit system:

Excel 2010:
“%COMMONPROGRAMFILES%\microsoft shared\Virtualization Handler\CVH.EXE” “Microsoft Excel Starter 2010 9014006604090000”

Word 2010:
“%COMMONPROGRAMFILES%\microsoft shared\Virtualization Handler\CVH.EXE” “Microsoft Word Starter 2010 9014006604090000”

Hope this helps.

Steve
othersteve on February 18, 2012 at 10:14 pm said:

One more word of warning: WordPress apparently likes to convert my quotes to angled quotes. When using the above shortcut codes, be sure to delete and RETYPE all quotation marks!
Leif on March 7, 2012 at 12:02 pm said:

When waiting for your answer i klickt right on the word and excel file and changed the opening with exel instead of advanced something. Than I closed and it worked well but with other icon for the word and excel documents.
Connie on March 18, 2012 at 7:01 pm said:

It worked.First had to remove old Microsoft office a.nd then only first stop above. Thanks
morula on March 20, 2012 at 11:22 am said:

dis rily helped thank you very much
rachmat on March 27, 2012 at 3:03 am said:

Thanks for your helpful post .. it helped me alot !!!
Akshay on April 3, 2012 at 8:51 am said:

This was brilliant.. so simple steps and clear as well..
You saved my day mate.

Cheers
Ivan on April 8, 2012 at 10:45 am said:

This was infinitely more helpful than almost anything I’ve ever read on Microsoft’s website. Thank you so very much! From now on this website will probably be the first place I check when I’ve got issues I can’t figure out. Thanks again!
Bmichera on April 10, 2012 at 5:24 pm said:

THANK YOU SOOOO MUCH. YOU JUST SAVED THE EDUCATION CAREER OF A FRESHMAN. KUDOS
Julie on April 19, 2012 at 1:48 pm said:

Many many thanks – I’ve been trying for hours to get rid of the stupid click-2-run thingy. I’ve restored my laptop to an earlier time about 6 times with no luck. I was a little scared to try your solution as I didn’t want to loose microsoft altogether and have to purchase another one, but after reading a few feedbacks thought I’d give it a try. I am now glad I did as I can now view my word and excell files again – you are brilliant xxx
Joe on April 22, 2012 at 10:51 am said:

Thank you for taking the time to post this and help me and others. I tried it and it finally corrected this problem. Many thanks!
Mandy on April 23, 2012 at 1:18 am said:

Thank you so much! I did it once and it worked, however for no apparent reason Starter disappeared again. I’ve done it again and so far so good. You’re a lifesaver.
mario on April 27, 2012 at 9:59 am said:

Excelente muchas gracias me funciono a la perfección!!!!
coqui3L on April 27, 2012 at 9:02 pm said:

Thank you soooooo much Steve! It worked perfectly. We got my friend out of a bind.
coolplayer on April 30, 2012 at 12:51 pm said:

hi steve,
how can i::
copying the following directory to another location:
%PROGRAMDATA%\Microsoft\OEMOffice14\OStarter\en-us
othersteve on April 30, 2012 at 1:23 pm said:

Try this:

Click Start > in the search box, type:

cmd /c md %SYSTEMDRIVE%\OfficeBackup & copy /y %PROGRAMDATA%\Microsoft\OEMOffice14\OStarter\en-us\*.* %SYSTEMDRIVE%\OfficeBackup & @echo Done! & @pause & explorer.exe %SYSTEMDRIVE%\OfficeBackup

and press ENTER. Let me know if this works!
coolplayer on April 30, 2012 at 3:00 pm said:

yah it worked, made a backup, thanks very much
my question now how can i ::Run the SetupConsumerC2ROLW.exe file
coolplayer on April 30, 2012 at 3:18 pm said:

hey steven it already worked,
thanks very much man,
this is really great
Mandy on April 30, 2012 at 10:18 pm said:

No idea why, it’s gone again! I wonder if System Mechanic could be the problem when it cleans up the registry?
othersteve on April 30, 2012 at 10:27 pm said:

Absolutely. I mention on my website the dangers of registry cleaners. They are rarely helpful and often damaging to a system, sometimes causing irreversible damage. The reason is that there isn’t any way that a program can know with certainty what is and is not needed within the registry hives. Even if a significant amount of unneeded/inaccurate data is located, the effect on performance is always negligible. I never use them in practice and always recommend against them.

My best advice is to fix the problem again, then uninstall System Mechanic and cross your fingers that you don’t run into any other strange problems it may have created down the road!
Mandy on May 1, 2012 at 8:47 am said:

Thanks so much, I’ll do that!
mohan on May 1, 2012 at 7:47 pm said:

thanks so much, it worked .
Nicholas Henley on May 4, 2012 at 8:32 am said:

Thank you for publishing this helpful tool. I have downloaded the file and have followed the easy to follow instructions.. and yes I can also say it works!!!

I cannot thank you enough for getting my Office 2010 up and working again; on which I am very grateful.
bteacher99 on May 6, 2012 at 11:57 am said:

My “second copy” (I was entitled to run Office 2010 Student/Home on two computers) suddenly went “Click2Run” on me, and claimed that the internet wasn’t connecting. Office refused to function after that, and ONLY this solution solved the problem. I couldn’t find the listed file in the Office14 folder, but I simply redownloaded the “full” file since I’d saved my product key. Thank you so much for providing these instructions.
bteacher99 on May 6, 2012 at 11:58 am said:

And for the record, this works with XP as well.
missingchord on May 7, 2012 at 7:43 pm said:

Thanks Steve. This one’s worked. Cheers.
Mielle on May 10, 2012 at 3:27 am said:

Thank you so much for posting this! I finally figured out why Microsoft Word wasn’t opening on my laptop and your guide fixed the problem completely. Thanks again.
Alan on May 10, 2012 at 9:49 am said:

Thank you so much. This is the only advice that actually worked for my office starter issue!
Carlo on May 14, 2012 at 6:45 am said:

Perfect.. Too good.. This worked for me.. Microsoft site too doesnt give a clear solution for this problem.. Thanks a lot Steve..
Christina on May 15, 2012 at 12:52 am said:

You are a true life saver!
I do all my schoolwork at home and I can’t afford to buy the full version, without this I would’ve! Thank you so so so much!
Laura on May 16, 2012 at 10:00 am said:

Thank you so much! I am a business owner, but not computer saavy. Your instructions were clear, even for me. Thanks!

Laura
Jim on May 16, 2012 at 7:26 pm said:

Hello Steve,

I have been working on my Click2Run problem for several days now and I thought I would just bite the bullet and buy the Home/Student Office. The young man at the store told me that the installation would remove anything that was a problem. Welllllllll, when I downloaded the Office product, I had the installation error about C2R preventing the installation of my new fancy Office 2010. I knew I was in trouble when my two granddaughters could not help me. I could not uninstall C2R. So I began searching for and reading anything I could find about the now infamous C2R Configuration Failure. That’s when I stumbled into your site and found your info on removing C2R and Office Starter. I followed your instructions and now have my fancy new Office 2010 running and I can finally continue my work. Mostly I use Word and some Excel.

I am not sure of your reasons for going through all the work and research to post your tips and techniques but I am most grateful that you do. Thanks so much for the help. Things were looking a little bleak for a few days. Too bad for me you aren’t closer to Sussex, Wisconsin.

Again, thank you.

Jim
othersteve on May 17, 2012 at 9:05 am said:

Thanks for all the continued comments guys! I’m thrilled this worked for you. If you have any more questions I would be happy to try and help. 🙂

Jim, well, I guess that proves that it also applies to pretty much any other flavor of Office delivered/supported by the C2R framework. It makes sense that it would, but I just hadn’t witnessed it myself yet. It’s good to know that the same solution also works in those instances.

And just for the record, the return is pretty minimal in terms of posting up these fixes on a blog for all to see. It nets me some hits to the site, certainly, but it doesn’t help me much with local business. Nevertheless I enjoy it, and truly, it’s most often meant as a future reference for myself than anything else! Once I articulate and post a fix, I’m more likely to remember how I did it later on, and plus I can always refer back to the article if I need to know how to do it all over again! 😉

For what it’s worth, though, I can perform remote service. So if you ever need anything and you want to get in touch… I have done nationwide service before! Just let me know.
lijo varghese on May 19, 2012 at 11:38 am said:

thank you very much.
MY PROBLEM SOLVED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.
YOU ARE DOING GREAT SERVICE TO US……
THANK YOU ONCE AGAIN…………….
Paul Tucker on May 22, 2012 at 9:38 am said:

Hi Steve,

I’m having the click2run configuration error trying to bring up excel. I have not tried your
fix to the problem. My question is how much would you charge to fix it remotely?

Thanks,
Paul Tucker
othersteve on May 22, 2012 at 12:20 pm said:

Hey Paul,

I’ve done a couple others here and it generally takes around 20 – 30 minutes depending on the speed of the PC, the AV installed, etc. That’s around $25-35 if that’s cool with you!

Let me know and I can tell you how to get things set up for me. 🙂

-Steve
Todd Lewis on May 23, 2012 at 6:45 pm said:

Worked great for me! Thanks Steve!!

Bump!
Gregg on May 24, 2012 at 10:06 pm said:

Completed steps to #5 rebooted again then started office 2010, starter was there ran it to install and agreement. Thanks for your help clicktorun and your easy to follow instructions done the trick.
dwayne on May 25, 2012 at 7:11 pm said:

Ok You win the grand prize. I hate the 2010 program it locked and i couldn’t get help. Microsoft was worthless on this one. Thanks
Paul Tucker on May 27, 2012 at 12:25 pm said:

To anyone with a computer software problem you want fixed remotely:

I had a “Click to run” problem with the Office Starter, Steve had the problem resolved
remotely in less than 40 minutes.. I’m one happy computer user.
Thank you Steve..

Paul Tucker
BetterOff on June 8, 2012 at 11:38 am said:

Spent nearly 2 days trying to get rid of Starter on a new Win 7 machine so that I could install a full version of Office without errors. This worked perfect… Thanks!
Maroon59 on June 9, 2012 at 10:18 am said:

I am using Windows 7. Having a little trouble with Step 5. Have not been able to locate the ProgramData Directory. A little more explanation –please. Thanks.
othersteve on June 9, 2012 at 10:52 am said:

Maroon,

It’s a system hidden directory. The easiest way to get there is to open any Windows Explorer window and type %PROGRAMDATA% in the address bar.
Maroon59 on June 9, 2012 at 2:11 pm said:

Got it all working again. Thanks so much!
Maroon59 on June 10, 2012 at 8:44 am said:

Thought I was home free, but still having a problem.

When I click on a document–either Excel or Word–the document displays as normal. I would assume that means the Starter versions are installed.

However, if I want to create a new document of either kind, I cannot find a program to “click” on to start the program.

Help?
Maroon59 on June 10, 2012 at 9:53 am said:

A little further clarification. If I open an existing document, I can use the file function to the point where I can get to a new blank file of either kind. I just can’t find an entry in the programs listing or in the programdata file to start Word or Excel from scratch. This seemed to be working yesterday. Am I just missing something very obvious?
Iheanyi on June 11, 2012 at 4:00 am said:

Thank you sooo much for this. I had been unable to use MS Office since I bought my laptop last year until I tried this tip. Well done.
Pete on June 11, 2012 at 2:18 pm said:

Thanks very much, I too spent hours trying to sort this out & even did a reinstall of Windows 7, but nothing worked. This has worked perfectly.
pepe on June 15, 2012 at 2:21 am said:

Thanks a bunch…..this whole installation is a mess….on top of this the ‘starter’ program was on my system and I had installed the full home version and NEITHER would work due to the issue with the click to run hangups. thanks for the info and files! curiously the 3rd step didn’t show any MS office products installed but office 2010 still showed in the control panel for install/remove still
Don H on June 16, 2012 at 6:42 pm said:

Hey Steve. The local computer store (Future Shop) said MS Office 2010 Starter was un-repairable (click2run error). You proved them wrong. It took me a while but my previous experience in working in the root directory really helped. Thanks a million from Penticton, British Columbia in Canada.

dh
Sunshine on June 17, 2012 at 3:11 pm said:

Thank you very, very, much!!! I am not tech savvy at all, but your instructions were easy to follow and I did not encounter any problems. Thanks again.
Lunn Ave on June 19, 2012 at 5:59 am said:

Hi Steve, I too spent several hours trying to fix whatever it was that had gone so horribly wrong – I have no idea what happened. Working one minute, broken the next. It took me a couple of goes, but what you suggested finally did work. Thank you so much. LIFESAVER x
Don Szenina on June 26, 2012 at 11:17 pm said:

Hi Steve:

After spending a couple of hours trying to repair this problem for a friend, I happended on your solution. Thissolved the problem. Thank you for taking the time to post this detailed solution!
Tim L (UK) on June 27, 2012 at 4:00 pm said:

Hey Steve

It is now 215n hrs on day four of trying to fix the damned problem using our chums in the so called “microsoft help and support”. in a sum total of ten minutes you had me back up and running again. You Sir, are a genius. Thanks very much indeed. I have added your page to my favourites as once i have slept off my Microsoft headache I will be returning to find out if you can assist me in other issues that seem to have cropped up .

Thank you so very much sir!!

cheers

tim
Mike on July 1, 2012 at 11:48 am said:

Remarkable. More than a year on and almost certainly the most definitive solution out there.

Microsoft should honour you somehow, like naming their next OS after you…
“Windows Steven”?
othersteve on July 1, 2012 at 12:59 pm said:

LOL, I don’t think that version of Windows would sell very well, Mike. 😉

Thanks to everyone for the continued feedback. I’m glad this has helped you!
laurent on July 2, 2012 at 8:47 am said:

hi,

i tried to follow your steps, all of them worked perfectly except the last one. when trying to reinstall office from the program_data folder i got an error in the end, i think it was step 4 or 5 of the installation process. it said that i would need to run it again but the same error appeared. i used system restore to get back to the initial state, meaning click2run configuration problem
laurent on July 4, 2012 at 7:51 am said:

in fact, when running cleanc2r.exe i can see in the console that click to run cannot be uninstalled…
othersteve on July 4, 2012 at 6:52 pm said:

If you’re using Vista or 7, be sure to run cleanc2r.exe as Administrator.
Eric on July 6, 2012 at 6:43 pm said:

Thanks. This worked perfectly. Very easy solution to a frustrating problem.
jeaniene on July 9, 2012 at 2:23 pm said:

Hi Steve
I have a question. First let me stress that I am computer illiterate. Question is I hade the Microsoft starter on my computer when I bought it(it was limited/basic). For some reason it stopped working so I had the bright idea of uninstalling it then reinstalling it. Now it won’t let me install anything unless i have a key code. When I get the key code it says I cannot download because I had a previous office on the computer. My click to run is gone. I also have a q drive which says its protected and I cannot access it. Any suggestions or am I just in a hot mess. My computer is a refurbished but only a yaer old. Do I have to get a new one because of this. Thanks ahead for the advice.
Tino on July 11, 2012 at 1:09 pm said:

Hi!

i just wanted to add my thanks. this process worked and I’ll be adding it to our DataBase of fixes but with all credit to you.

thanks agin.
othersteve on July 15, 2012 at 12:27 pm said:

Hey jeaniene,

It sounds to me like you could probably use the same steps as above to correct your issue. The only difference, of course, would be that rather than running the C2R installer for Starter Edition, you’d instead replace that with the installer for your current paid version of Office.

Tino,

Thanks for the feedback! I’m glad I was able to help. 🙂

Everyone else,

Thanks again for the continued comments. I am thrilled this worked for you.

-Steve
Mark on July 15, 2012 at 12:52 pm said:

Thank you sooo very much. I am so glad you have taken the time to help. I’m in Southern California, so if you need anything let me know.
mariel on July 16, 2012 at 9:47 am said:

im quite lost with all those techie terms, being a computer novice, i find hard to follow those instructions. can you make it simpler? thanks
Ryan11433 on July 16, 2012 at 12:18 pm said:

Thank you for saving this tool because I couldn’t find this tool for years and a reminder to correct a mistake that was caused.
Stephen on July 17, 2012 at 8:13 pm said:

Steve,

Thanks, I stumbled upon this website after looking through countless websites of useless information from microsoft. I wish I had found your site before getting System Mechanic. What a terrible product, I was starting to wonder why every single day I had so much stuff it was telling me to get rid of.

I have since saved your clean up tool and gotten rid of System Mechanic. Thanks so much!
Geejazzer on July 25, 2012 at 7:28 pm said:

Hi Steve… may i add my thanks to you for this fix.. I should know better.. had the same problem with using CCleaner which “cleaned” Office 2003 some years ago…
Will be removing System Mechanic immediately.. However are there any maintenance tools out there that can be used?
Cheers from Sydney…
othersteve on July 26, 2012 at 10:11 pm said:

Thanks everyone — I really appreciate your feedback, and I’m glad this helped you!

Hey Geejazzer,

That’s the beauty of it: you really don’t need any sort of maintenance tools beyond general checkups and preventive measures. Meaning:

1) Keeping at least 15% free space on your drive in Vista and 7 so that automatic defragmentation can occur (in XP you have to schedule it manually),
2) Ensuring everything is up to date (security and plugins especially as they’re your front line of defense),
3) Performing an occasional hardware health scan if one is available to you via built-in utilities (such as PC Doctor), and
4) Probably an annual check-up by a tech you know just to tie up any other loose ends or catch problems early on.

There’s no reason to bother with much of anything else. I find that too often my customers are fooled by previous techs into overthinking their maintenance of Windows. For the most part, everything you do to it beyond this is either marginally effective or harmful. It actually does a pretty good job of managing itself and unless you’re well aware of how to spot specific problems and solve them, there’s no good way to go about trying.

PS– I know you’re in Sydney, but if you’re ever in Louisville, of course, you should have -me- do the yearly check-up! 😉

Hope this helps! 🙂

-Steve
Mike on August 3, 2012 at 7:56 pm said:

I see it, I believe it, It’s finally fixed! It was C2R itself that was lunched… not any of the starter apps… and no one at MS or anywhere else seemed to be able to get that through their heads. After many weeks of searching I found the answer in the last place I looked … triplescomputers.com… which from now on will be the first place I look!
Many Many Thanks
AiQuoc on August 4, 2012 at 10:00 am said:

Your Click2Run Configuration error solution may help my problem. Can you confirm that you think it will.
I uninstalled Office Starter 2010 (a major aggrevation) to get files to open with my Office 2010 instead of that blasted Starter 2010.
I get this request to activate Office 2010 but I already have and when I click Activate it says it can’t.
Can I use your above solution and stop after step 4 where it completely removes Starter 2010?
Do you think I can then double click on a word file and it open in Office 2010?
Thanks
Nadine on August 4, 2012 at 10:57 am said:

Thank you so much. These kind of issues always plague me and usually I find no solution no matter how much I look for an answer. I did what you said and now everything’s working 100%
othersteve on August 4, 2012 at 11:42 am said:

Hey AiQuoc,

I think I’d do the following:

1) Create a System Restore point first.
2) Follow through with ALL of the above steps EXCEPT #5.
3) Either:
–a) Install Office using your disc or downloaded installer, or, if you don’t have one…
–b) Reinstall your full version of Office using an MSI installer. To do this, visit this page and SKIP steps 1 – 4:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel-help/click-to-run-switch-%20to-using-an-msi-based-office-edition-HA101850538.aspx

4) Let me know if this works for you! 🙂

To everyone else,

Thanks for the continued feedback. This solution is now one of the first search results listed thanks to your taking time to post your comments. This will help other people in the future! 🙂

-Steve
AiQuoc on August 4, 2012 at 9:22 pm said:

I’m sorry I tried to reply earlier but my computer froze.
I will try what you suggest and I’ll let you know if it worked.
Thanks for the suggestion.
AiQuoc
AiQuoc on August 4, 2012 at 9:30 pm said:

I went to your link. It looks like it wants me to purchase Office or an MSI installer? I already have purchased Office 2010 so I don’t understand the need to purchase MSI installer. Can’t I simply re-install my Office 2010 after your step 4 above?
Thanks
AiQuoc
Alan on August 5, 2012 at 2:14 pm said:

I solved my “Click 2 Run Configuration Failure” quite simply. I switched users or you can create a new user. Restart computer. Log in to that new user. Go to “Start”, “All Programs”, “Microsoft Office Starter (English)”, “Microsoft Word Starter 2010”. This will reload the program and fix the Failure problem. Do the same for the Excel. Switch users and Log in again to your own. That’s it. It worked for me.
Alfred on August 5, 2012 at 2:27 pm said:

thank you Steve for your post, it was great my problem has been resolve
Emily on August 12, 2012 at 12:26 pm said:

Thanks for this, i think this will probably fix my problem. Office Starter was preinstalled on my laptop, and i installed Office 2010 after using Office Starter for awhile. I never had any problem when opening documents downloaded in Chrome, but in Internet Explorer it would open them up in the starter version. I figured I’d uninstall the starter, but then when i try to open documents that I downloaded i get the stupid Click-2-Run configuration failure error.

I’m trying the Repair feature in Office Professional Plus 2010, but it is hanging and I don’t know if it’s actually doing anything. Should I just uninstall all office programs? Or do what you suggest above?

Thanks!
Cindy and Rik on August 17, 2012 at 11:51 am said:

Hi Steve,

Thank you very much!!

This has solved the problem easely.

Greetz,

Cindy and Rik
Bill on August 22, 2012 at 12:48 pm said:

Helped a friend fix this error message using remote software, these steps worked like a charm. Thanks!
JerkyJeff on August 22, 2012 at 1:00 pm said:

Thanks! This worked great! 🙂
michi on August 30, 2012 at 10:48 pm said:

every step worked great! only problem is I tried downloading office 2010 starter but I have no idea if I clicked the right link ince on the page because it wont work 🙁
Pete Rollo on September 3, 2012 at 6:01 am said:

You can do what Microsoft can´t! I just bought a new i7 64 bit setup. I´m English but as I live in Spain, it´s all but impossible to get a pc with windows in english. I bought my 64 bit English Office setup online direct from MS uk. Their so called workaround to remove click2run just did not work :((. I followed your instructions to the letter and all worked just as you said. Many Many Thanks! :))))
michael on September 4, 2012 at 1:46 pm said:

If you was female i would kiss you, absloute fantastic job
othersteve on September 4, 2012 at 1:50 pm said:

Michael:

Thanks…. ?? 😉

Everyone else,

I appreciate the continued feedback! I apologize for not getting around to answering every single question; I am doing my best. I stay pretty busy these days, so my blog is for those moments when I have a small bit of spare time! 🙂

Let me know if you are still having any issues and I can try to help.

-Steve
dracs on September 4, 2012 at 8:58 pm said:

hello steve,could you please make a video of this and post it in you tube,,i didnot fully understand to do it step by step,,, as i am not that good in computer field,,looking at the video would be a great help,,please help me i am stuck here,,another question,,is it possible to get evey word documents back after we fix this click2run error..
dracs on September 5, 2012 at 8:16 am said:

hello steve.
this is dracs again.i got the word documents back even though i had no idea where it was leading me,completely no idea about the procedure..as far as saving the file ,what i did was copied the word started and pasted it to the backup folder in c drive..did i do it right?? another question is while i was runing the cleanc2r , a mesage appeared like no path ways something msizip path missing,,blindfoldedly i ran the msizap file aswell,not knowing where it would lead me ,,,was that a right thing to do???anyways i got the files back..i can see that the Q drive is not there anymore,,will that be a problem for my pc? do i have to download the word starter again …cause i dont see the reason why i should cause it functioning …and the icon of the word starter is not there anymore ,,its like square box inside a box ,,how do i get the icons back …will it be okey if i dont have the icons back and just start working with what i have ,,if there is anything i did wrong please let me know and lastly thank you so much for being generous enough to share this knowledge with us ,,thanks.
dracs.
othersteve on September 5, 2012 at 8:20 am said:

Hey dracs,

If you follow the procedure step by step it will work perfectly. The steps guide you through backing up your existing Office 2010 Starter installation files (which it sounds like you did, and that’s good) and then completely removing all traces of Office 2010 Starter and Click2Run. Following that, reinstallation is easy using the files you backed up during Step 1.

-Steve
Danny on September 12, 2012 at 8:13 pm said:

It works again! But the the word and excel icons have been replaced with the windows default ones. Any suggestions?
Monique on September 20, 2012 at 8:10 pm said:

Finally!!! This worked!! Thanks so much
Glen on September 24, 2012 at 6:48 pm said:

Steve,
I have a new laptop with office starter 2010 installed. I activated the starter version after which I was able to open the word and excel applications o.k. A few days later I tried to open a word document and all I get is the opening arrow spinning for about 10 seconds then nothing happens. I have tried numerous ways to open the document to no avail. When I try to launch the word and excel applications the same thing happens. I do not have a Q drive installed on my computer. When I tried to go to program files to “fix” c2r I get the c2r configuration fail error. I do not get this error when I try to launch word or excel. Any ideas on what is happening or how to fix this other than doing the complete uninstall and reinstall as stated previously?
Thanks for your time!
othersteve on September 25, 2012 at 9:57 pm said:

Danny,

Hmm, that’s odd. You may be able to manually set them, but I’m not 100% sure. Do you mean they’re blank on all Word/Excel files?

Glen,

I’m pretty sure you’re stuck with a reinstall of Starter. It doesn’t really take that long; just around 20 minutes or so. Your situation sounds pretty bad, almost as though a partial install completed or something. I wouldn’t fool with it and just reinstall them as detailed instead.

Let me know what transpires!

-Steve
charlie on September 30, 2012 at 5:40 am said:

nice one!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Frank in UK on October 1, 2012 at 12:26 am said:

Hello Steve, I am trying to use your CleanC2R.exe solution with a netbook, Windows 7 starter and with Office 2010 Student / home installed over the top of Office 2010 Starter (which was pre-installed I believe). Download the cleanc2r ZIP file and it contains 4 files. Attempt to run cleanc2r.exe and get an error “Can’t find msizap.exe in the path”. The file is one of the 4 files n the ZIP package. Any clues?? Thanks, Frank
othersteve on October 1, 2012 at 8:28 am said:

Hey there Frank,

Be sure to UNZIP all files before attempting to run any of them. That error message signifies that one of the files cannot be located in the current PATH. In case you’re curious, the PATH variable is a system-wide variable (with a small user-mode extension) which references which folders to check when a program is called without a path specified. In addition to the PATH variable, the first place Windows always checks, by default, is the current folder. If, however, the other files haven’t been unzipped, they aren’t in the current folder for use. Zip files don’t count as folders in spite of the fact that they are displayed as such.

Hope this helps!

-Steve
Raj on October 5, 2012 at 5:12 pm said:

Excellent! It worked well. Bravo!
Wanda on October 6, 2012 at 11:13 pm said:

Thanks for the fix! It worked. And I was, by the way, running System Mechanic. I will either remove it from my computer or opt out of the registry cleaning feature, if possible. Thanks again!
xerexen on October 11, 2012 at 2:38 pm said:

Thanks steve..you’re great, it work…
hilda on October 17, 2012 at 3:02 pm said:

thanks a gazillion. had been trying yo use mostarter2010 for 3 days and nothing i tried would work.. then i stumbled upon your solution and it worked great. can now read/write word docs
Lauren brown on October 17, 2012 at 4:02 pm said:

Amazing! Solve my problem perfectly! You sir are a genius! 😀
D Smith on October 20, 2012 at 10:43 am said:

I’ve spent hours trying to sort this, finding no help on the microsoft website, and the advice on forums hasn’t worked, this is the only thing that did work, although I didn’t do step 5, I just reinstalled it from online using the link on the product case (no disc drive on here), so thanks very much!
Trevor Judd on October 20, 2012 at 4:25 pm said:

Hi Steve,

Great – Thank you. This worked a teat on my Dell (that came pre-loaded with the MSO Starter) and after losing it when trying to load a full version of MS Office which I thought was a multi-user version. Top Man!

Regards Trevor (UK)
Scott Demarest on October 21, 2012 at 9:21 pm said:

Steve,

This web page was very helpful. Thanks for putting up such thorough instructions and useful tools. Very much appreciate your expertise. Much better solution than the other alternatives. -Scott
CM on October 28, 2012 at 10:51 pm said:

I had a guy remove a virus. He said that he would have to take it back to factory settings. (My laptop came with Office Starter.) I couldn’t get him to help me with this problem after I paid him. Anyway, you have saved the day. This was so easy! Thank you so much!
A Lot Better on October 29, 2012 at 3:24 am said:

Steve,
THANK YOU! YOU SAVED THE DAY! After weeks of agonizing attempted repair and googling various websites, your solution fixed the problem within 15 minutes. THANK YOU, YOUR A GENIUS!
kris28 on November 5, 2012 at 9:32 pm said:

How can I ever thank you!!! Your blog is very helpful and the directions were crystal clear, thanks so much 😀 I was frantically searching for answers for my problem with the MS office starter in my laptop. Thanks to you it working perfectly fine now 🙂 thank you so much for this. 😀
Chris on November 7, 2012 at 10:03 pm said:

YOU’RE THE BEST!!!!
Kerrie on November 11, 2012 at 12:48 am said:

Thank you SOOO much. I followed the steps and it worked like a charm!
This, after a year of not being able to access my documents and resorting to google documents instead. Thank you!
Lesi on November 19, 2012 at 8:49 pm said:

Woooot! this was the solution that I was searching high and low all over google. thank you so much – Champion!!
Catherine on November 20, 2012 at 3:49 pm said:

Thank you!!! This saved the day. Really appreciate you sharing this fix, I was very worried while browsing the Microsoft support forums!
Mano on November 24, 2012 at 4:58 pm said:

Thank you … thank you … thank you … (bookmarking TripleS homepage…done) … Thanks again
Dina on December 6, 2012 at 5:28 pm said:

Thank you SOSOSO much for this fix. I have been struggling with this annoyance for a LONG time. I truly appreciate your concise and helpful solution.
amy on December 6, 2012 at 11:09 pm said:

Thank you !!! Yeah, after hours of trying to fix this program, it finally works!! Woo Hoo! Thank you for taking the time to help all of us!!
Zain Haji on December 8, 2012 at 5:07 am said:

Thanks a million. Works perfectly every time…
Kevin Picott on December 9, 2012 at 12:55 pm said:

Great instructions! Unfortunately I seem to have a knack for having even the clearest solutions not work for me. While running CleanCR the first time it seems to hang up on “Removing Softgrid Service SftPlay…” I can’t see any such service or executable running; is it waiting for an event that’s not going to happen or is it really supposed to take hours for this to run?
othersteve on December 9, 2012 at 1:26 pm said:

Kevin,

This should only take a few minutes to complete. If you open up an elevated command prompt and type the following:

sc query SftPlay

What results?
Kevin Picott on December 9, 2012 at 4:14 pm said:

Half an hour later the prompt is still sitting there with no response. (This is my daughter’s laptop; she’s had viruses in the past which I cleaned off with MalwareBytes. It’s possible they hit something I didn’t know about.)
othersteve on December 9, 2012 at 5:06 pm said:

I would be interested to hear what happens if you run that command. If that doesn’t reveal the problem, some other things that could cause this include:

1) Corrupted permissions in the registry. This can be fixed using a Full Permissions Reset. Let me know if you need help and I can try and assist.

2) A failing hard drive. If the drive is going bad, these sort of spontaneous failures to access particular files or registry keys often begin to occur.

You could also try running the CleanC2R tool within Safe Mode, but there is no guarantee it will work there (I’ve never tried it). Before trying this I would at least try the sc query command I posted earlier.
Kevin Picott on December 9, 2012 at 7:10 pm said:

Sorry, I wasn’t being clear. It was the ‘sc’ command that still had no return after a half hour.
othersteve on December 9, 2012 at 8:02 pm said:

Kevin,

Gotcha. Okay, I’d suggest trying this:

sc config SftPlay start= disabled

Note the space after the = sign.

Post the resulting response from the system here if you don’t mind.

Then reboot the PC and try again with the CleanC2R program. Let’s see where this gets you. 🙂
Kevin Picott on December 9, 2012 at 8:38 pm said:

No response from the system at all. In fact the only response I can get from any sc queries is the help information. Not even just “sc query” ever comes back. I can’t see anything in the services window that looks like SftPlay.
othersteve on December 9, 2012 at 8:57 pm said:

Hmm, this is actually beginning to sound an awful lot like malware. I know you mentioned cleaning it off in the past… any other symptoms now? The problem is that many modern infections are very sophisticated and thus are not detected by mere scanners. Two of the most common rootkits, TDSS/Alureon (Pihar variant) and ZeroAccess can both lead to this sort of behavior. Don’t attempt to hunt for/clean them on your own or you can end up with an unbootable system.

Or it could still also be a bad hard drive possibly. I would not rule out either. Permissions are beginning to sound less likely as a cause, but until we rule out the possibility of a bad drive (or at least back everything up which is important), it isn’t a good idea to perform a system-wide permissions repair.

Check your system event log for clues:

Start > in the Start Search box, type:

eventvwr.msc

And press ENTER. You may find some help here if you filter for Errors and Critical in both the Application and System event logs.

Also look for any errors with “disk” as the source. While certainly not always present, these often can indicate problems with the system hard drive when Disk 0 is referenced.
Kevin Picott on December 10, 2012 at 6:47 am said:

No other symptoms, other than this everything seems to be running find. Nothing odd in the event logs, no reference to disk at all. You’ve given me a lot to go on, thanks so much! It seems like the most prudent course for her at the moment is to switch to OpenOffice and keep an eye out for other suspicious software activity.
Thomas H. on December 18, 2012 at 7:19 am said:

Really?! REALLY?!?! It was that easy?! I can only echo the sentiments of others when I say THANK YOU for this solution! Like others, I have spent HOURS searching Microsoft Forums and other online avenues to solve this problem (2nd computer I have encountered this with).

I wanted (did, actually) to yell expletives in frustration when tackling this problem. Now I want (did too, actually) yell expletives in elation at how simple and effective this solution was!!!

I will also agree that the instructions could use a little ‘dumbing down’ for us non-computer speak types. Perhaps a list of instructions with screen shots of where to look for stuff. Things like ‘execute’ when that’s not a word Windows uses (Run, instead?), and exactly how to search the ProgramData directory in Step 5. I eventually stumbled through it, but it was a sheer guess on my part at times as to what some of the instructions meant.

For all of you reading this and preparing to perform the steps, I advise you write down the 5 steps EXACTLY as worded (I took a pic of the screen and just referred to it). As you go through system reboots, you will lose your page and time looking for it each time.

Once again, THANK YOU for taking the time to do this for us!

Thomas H.
Civilian Contractor, Afghanistan
mks on December 20, 2012 at 3:42 am said:

i have completely uninstalled office 2010 that was pre-installed on my laptop i bought from lenovo . i have product key how can i get it back? i tried

http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/products/microsoft-office-2010-backup-FX101828860.aspx?CTT=5&origin=HA101828490
your Office 2010 Product Key provided represents a product which is not eligible for free download. Please re-enter your Product Key and try again, or check the list of eligible products. If this does not work, you may be interested in downloading a free trial or purchasing Office 2010 products at http://www.office.com please help me regarding this
RastaFarzi on December 21, 2012 at 3:29 pm said:

Steve, you should probably set up a donation link for those members of the public whom have resolved the issue on hand due to your informative post, especially considering the vast amount of positive comments and more importantly, happy members of the public thanks to your post. I’m sure there are many people (such as myself) whom would like to express gratuity in terms of donation per such a fantastic, unique (ie: haven’t found a solution to this on any other site per google search, seems like yours is the unique one of few, if any at all) post.
Thomas H. on December 23, 2012 at 5:49 am said:

UPDATE: Steve, here is something for you to look into! I think I have found what has caused this issue for me. After running the initial CleanC2R, I used my computer as normal and a couple days later the problem reemerged. In that time I had; restarted my computer multiple times, run a deep scan (including Q drive), used multiple Office files, and clicked OK when the window for Office Updates appeared.

I ran CleanC2R again and did each of the above one at a time to see if I could isolate the problem. After multiple reboots, two Deep Scans, and accessing multiple Office documents I encountered no issues. However, upon clicking OK to the Office updates, the problem occurred yet again shortly thereafter.

Therefore, After a third CleanC2R, I now click Cancel when the update window appears, and I have been trouble free since.

On my previous computer with this problem I did have CCleaner installed. On this computer I did have Defraggler. I uninstalled it after the first issue after reading your advice on cleaners. There is still a link to this problem with the Office updates however.

I agree with Rasta, I think you should have a DONATE link. I would gladly contribute for saving my butt with this problem. Computers are hard to get over here (cannot be shipped because of Lithium Ion batteries) and I need Office for my job.

Thomas Hess
Civilian Contractor, Afghanistan
othersteve on December 23, 2012 at 10:39 am said:

Guys,

Thanks again for all the kind comments and feedback. I’ve taken your (Rasta & Thomas) advice and provided a small “Donate” button on the right-hand side of my blog posts now in case anyone wants to say thanks. 🙂

Thomas,

That’s bizarre that it’s only seemingly occurring following an update. Updates to the Office system are pretty important as they include security patches. Plus, I install these same updates on hundreds of PCs that I configure for clients of mine without any issue at all. There must be something else occurring in conjunction that is triggered by the updates once installed. I wonder if there’s some way to isolate the source of the issue.

I would be curious to see if the same problem persists after a full permissions reset is performed on the registry. If you feel like performing any additional experimental work on your PC here (and if you’d like to try and install the updates successfully), you can also try this to see if it makes a difference:

1) Download/install this tool to the default location: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e8ba3e56-d8fe-4a91-93cf-ed6985e3927b&displaylang=en
2) Click Start > in the Start Search box, type notepad “%USERPROFILE%\Desktop\reset.bat” and press ENTER. Say Yes when prompted whether or not to create a new file.
3) Copy/paste the following into the notepad file:

if exist “%ProgramFiles%\Windows Resource Kits\Tools” cd /d “%ProgramFiles%\Windows Resource Kits\Tools”
if exist “%ProgramFiles(x86)%\Windows Resource Kits\Tools” cd /d “%ProgramFiles(x86)%\Windows Resource Kits\Tools”
subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE /grant=administrators=f /grant=system=f
subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_CURRENT_USER /grant=administrators=f /grant=system=f
subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT /grant=administrators=f /grant=system=f
subinacl /subdirectories %SystemDrive%\ /grant=administrators=f /grant=system=f

4) Save/close the notepad file, then head to your Desktop. Right-click the reset.bat file and choose Run as Administrator.

This will reset all permissions on files and registry keys on the drive so that the Administrator and System accounts have full access to them. I wonder if a failure during install due to permissions might be causing the weirdness that we’re seeing post-updates on this machine. Let me know if you do decide to try this (there’s no harm in it!), and if not, it’s no big deal!

Thanks and talk to you guys soon,

Steve
othersteve on December 23, 2012 at 10:44 am said:

Er, looks like the Donate button is only appearing on the main page right now. I’ll get that fixed soon. 😀

Edit: Fixed now.

Thanks again!
Josh Gilbert on December 28, 2012 at 12:40 am said:

Fantastic post, very thorough and got to the root of the problem. Much better than the numerous posts that attempted to use the un-install/re-install feature of the Control Panel.

I appreciate the help, and highly recommend this post for anyone experiencing this issue.

-Josh Gilbert
SteveM on December 28, 2012 at 1:28 am said:

Well I am running Windows 7 and I tried to use this solution to reset the file associations for .xls to automatically open with MS Office Starter but it didn’t work. I thought that doing this would reset all of the file associations but apparently not.

SteveM
othersteve on December 28, 2012 at 3:09 pm said:

Hey Steve,

First off, nice name 😉

Secondly, please try this:

Open a Command Prompt window (Start > in the Start Search box, type cmd), then type assoc .doc at the prompt and press ENTER. What is the result?
AlexGq on December 28, 2012 at 5:28 pm said:

Hi Steve,
Thanks for the very useful information!
I have a further question, though.
Could I just stop at the reboot after step 4 if I just want to get rid of the whole Office thing? I have LibreOffice and it works like a charm. I just wanted to delete the Q directory and wipe that “30015” error from view!
Thanks again.
Stephenie on January 1, 2013 at 2:43 pm said:

Hey I am really hoping this will help me. However, the link provided earlier about reinstalling Microsoft Starter is not valid. It appears they took it down in November 2012. Is there somewhere else I can go to do this? Also how do I backup my files that were saved in this program? Thanks so much..love this site!
othersteve on January 1, 2013 at 3:07 pm said:

Alex,

Certainly; there should be absolutely no harm in doing so. However, if the uninstaller works from within Programs and Features in the Control Panel, that’s always a better first option.

Stephenie,

Looks like the links were taken down due to a DMCA request. If you already have the Office Starter suite installed, however, or if it originally came with your PC and you didn’t uninstall “Microsoft Office 2010” from your Control Panel, you shouldn’t need to redownload the files anyway. You can instead find them here:

%PROGRAMDATA%\Microsoft\OEMOffice14\OStarter\en-us

Try opening your Start Menu and typing in the Start Search box:

explorer %PROGRAMDATA%\Microsoft\OEMOffice14\OStarter\en-us

Then press ENTER and see if the directory opens. If it does, all you need to do is follow the steps in the original post to repair the installation.
Thomas H. on January 2, 2013 at 4:51 am said:

Steve,

Sorry for the delay! I downloaded the microsoft tool and typed the command in the Start search window in step 2. I received the following X message: Windows cannot find ‘C:\Users\Administration\Desktop\reset.bat’. Make sure you typed the name correctly, and then try again.

I performed this attempted in both my user and administrator accounts and ensured that the %command was typed properly.

Thomas Hess
Civilian Contractor, Afghanistan
othersteve on January 2, 2013 at 9:43 am said:

Hey Thomas,

I apologize; it may be due to my blog software converting the quotation marks to angled quotes. Try this instead:

Once you’ve got SubInACL installed, download this script, right-click, choose “Run As Administrator”:

http://www.triplescomputers.com/files/reset.bat
Thomas Hess on January 6, 2013 at 2:26 pm said:

Steve,

I was able to get that code into notepad and run the .bat as an administrator. Upon receiving the C2R Update notification, I clicked ‘OK’ this time.

Afterwards, upon attempting to open a Word document, I ran into the same issue. When opening the document, the window says ‘Processing…’ and my download notification on the task bar says that Office is ‘downloading items and that the program may appear to be unresponsive.’

After several minutes, the dreaded C2R App Manager box appears stating that Office 2012 needs to be repaired! This confirms that something about the update is causing this problem for me.

Note that I have tried to run the C2R update on my Admin user account as well, with the same results.

-Thomas Hess
Lori Blocker on January 9, 2013 at 1:30 am said:

Steve,
OMG Thank you so so so much, I had searched for weeks on how to fix this Click 2 Run problem, to no avail. I am not that savvy at the computer and was terrified to try this, it just seemed complicated for me. I was having other issues with my computer and was afraid if I tried it, I wasn’t sure what might happen. I had to try it , I did and it worked so…..Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I have liked you on facebook, put you on my favorites list and have told everyone I know about you. This is the first place (and I am sure will be the last) I will look when I am having any other issues.
Have an awesome day, cause I know I will now!
George MacDougall on January 12, 2013 at 8:26 am said:

Thanks form Lakefield, ON Canada. You make the Internet a better place.
Raj on January 14, 2013 at 9:05 am said:

Thank you so much, I followed your steps for the very first time and everything was fixed, I am from a non-computer background, who only knows on how to work and operate it.

Great effort, thanks again
Mike on January 17, 2013 at 11:29 am said:

I must be dumb! I have tried and failed to find that %PROGRAMDATA%\Microsoft\OEMOffice14\OStarter\en-us
file with no luck. What the heck am I doing wrong?
othersteve on January 17, 2013 at 12:41 pm said:

Hey Mike,

Well, first of all, %PROGRAMDATA% is an environment variable that actually points to the %SYSTEMDRIVE%\ProgramData folder (which is hidden), where %SYSTEMDRIVE% is your main hard drive letter (i.e., C:).

If you can’t find it, try this:

Open your Start Menu and in the Start Search box, type:

cmd /c md %SYSTEMDRIVE%\OfficeBackup & copy /y %PROGRAMDATA%\Microsoft\OEMOffice14\OStarter\en-us\*.* %SYSTEMDRIVE%\OfficeBackup & @echo Done! & @pause & explorer.exe %SYSTEMDRIVE%\OfficeBackup

Then press ENTER. Let me know what happens.

-Steve
holly on January 29, 2013 at 11:52 pm said:

i cant find anywhere to re install my office starter steve???
Steve Schardein on January 29, 2013 at 11:54 pm said:

Holly,

Did you successfully back up the files in Step 1?
Karen Wright on January 31, 2013 at 3:16 pm said:

Hi…Looking for help to an annoying problem and you seem a knowledgeable and friendly guy…perhaps if you can’t help, you could point me in the right direction?

Ok…firstly, I have little computer knowledge so instructions need to really be step by step…

I cannot find Microsoft word 2010 anymore! I can open documents using it…ask for a new document page and then save it but have to go through the nonsense of having to open a previously saved document first!

It is not listed in my programs

Any ideas on how to get it back on the start up page…it has been gone for ages and we just do this silly way of using it but it would be great to get it back to normal.
Many thanks for reading and hope I haven’t wasted your time.
Steve Schardein on January 31, 2013 at 4:11 pm said:

Hey Karen,

Was it an installation from a DVD or CD, or a preinstalled version?
Johana Guinayen on February 10, 2013 at 9:01 am said:

Hi,
I’m sorry i’m having problem with the last step..i can’t find the SetupConsumerC2ROLW.exe..i can’t locate this..please help need to get my microsoft office working pls pls pls
Steve Schardein on February 10, 2013 at 4:19 pm said:

Hey Johana,

If you can’t find the installer file, it’s possible you may have accidentally deleted it. If so, if you are running Windows 7, you can try right-clicking the folder which is supposed to contain it (detailed above) and choosing Restore Previous Versions… to see if any backups exist!

Alternatively, you can also try a System Restore to the point prior to where you deleted the files.

Hope this helps!

-Steve
grateful gertie, uk on February 15, 2013 at 4:29 pm said:

Steve, thank you so much. I am female and would happily kiss you too 🙂 I have excel starter back. I can not believe i have done this given my deviations from your script. I need someone to help me configure some other stuff here in the uk and I would be interested in talking to you about it. It is basic stuff but not my forte. Would you be able to help? It’s stuff like configuring my samsung galaxy note 2 “phablet” as a wifi router for my asus netbook and setting up an hp all in one eprinter 1070a to print wirelessly from the samsung galaxy note 2 and netbook, mainly from the note though. I live in carrot crunching countryside where there is no free wifi. My samsung can be configured as a wifi router and my data plan allows it. I am also getting the smart docking station to use with the note. No doubt I will need assistance to hook this up to my tv and other media. Please let me know what you would charge for this if you were interested. I still can not believe excel works. Thank you so much. Grateful gertie
grateful gertie on February 15, 2013 at 5:20 pm said:

Steve I have tried to like you on Facebook but can not find Triple s. Can you put a link in a reply here and then I will. Having read more about your work, I suspect you will not be interested in my earlier request. Thanks again for the help. best wishes grateful gertie
Karthick.R on February 16, 2013 at 3:27 pm said:

Tremendous job…. thank u very much!!I fixed the issue by following your instruc….
Steve Schardein on February 16, 2013 at 3:32 pm said:

@Karthick.R:
Glad to be of assistance. 🙂

@Gertie:
Well, it’d certainly be difficult to help with that sort of thing remotely, though I do a lot of that here in Louisville! 😀 Happy I could help with your Office woes however.

Since you asked, you can like me on FB using this link: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Triple-S-Computers/144735048931153

But I really don’t get on FB all that often. Of greater impact are my Google reviews:
http://maps.google.com/maps/place?q=triple-s+computers&hl=en&cid=6351664513338394638

Please don’t feel obligated however! I am just happy to help.

Have a great weekend.
Marie on February 25, 2013 at 2:22 pm said:

Thank you so much for this fix. Everything was fine until 2 days ago…..would not open up or let me uninstall or repair thru control panel. Did this fix in less than 15 minutes. Worked on this mess with microsoft for 2 days with no help….just a bigger mess. Again….THANKS!!
Kate A. on February 28, 2013 at 6:05 pm said:

Hi ya,
I cannot find the OEMOffice14\OStarter\en-us directory under the progdata file. What do I do as I’m trying to re-install Microsoft office Starter? Kindly assist.

Regards,
Kate
Steve Schardein on February 28, 2013 at 11:22 pm said:

@Kate A.:

If it isn’t there, you may have inadvertently removed the installation files. If so, if you are running Windows 7, you can try right-clicking the folder which is supposed to contain it and choosing Restore Previous Versions… to see if any backups exist!

Alternatively, you can also try a System Restore to the point prior to where you deleted the files.

Hope this helps!

-Steve
Terry Craven on March 17, 2013 at 3:53 pm said:

Dear Steve,
Thank you so much for this information! It worked perfectly! Many thanks for a simple solution to a very annoying problem! You da man! 🙂
Hazel is no maid on March 17, 2013 at 5:02 pm said:

I AM SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO HAPPY ON THIS WONDERFUL DAY. Ok I’m gonna stop yelling in excitement but I am so thankful for you posting this. It worked! I can finally go on with my life. This really worked. I have tried so many things and nothing. Although it’s not that easy for a novice like myself but it I tried it and it worked perfectly. Ok bye ^_^
Kellee on March 17, 2013 at 6:52 pm said:

Hot dang Steve! Years later and this post is still a rockin’ solution! Thanks so much for your help and I’m sooooo happy you made this an easy fix! Have great days
–
ashley on March 19, 2013 at 10:09 pm said:

Can you please explain your instructions in lamens terms? I am lost and really need my microsoft working.
MATEO on March 24, 2013 at 1:18 pm said:

HELP ME LEFT IN STEP FIVE DO NOT LIKE WHAT SIE please help me
Cks on March 27, 2013 at 7:53 pm said:

Thank you so much for the fix! I searched and tried everything. Wish I would have seen this first! Maybe the techs at Microsoft could use your expertise since nobody there could help!
Ket on April 5, 2013 at 8:05 pm said:

Devine!
Sheeraz on April 11, 2013 at 2:55 pm said:

Hello,

Please help i dont understand the last question and now i have even lost Microsoft Word
Sumedha Mahajan on April 25, 2013 at 10:36 am said:

Thank u so much.

My father was having so much trouble with this error.!
Fixed it for him using the above steps.

Worked like magic 🙂
todd thompson on April 28, 2013 at 11:21 pm said:

you are the man!! on point instructions. much thanks
Kristie on May 7, 2013 at 3:05 pm said:

Hello I have followed the step but when I run the SetupConsumerC2ROLW.exe file, the set up gets to stage 3 and says there was a problem with Microsoft Office setup. is there anyway to solve this problem?
Steve Schardein on May 10, 2013 at 5:36 pm said:

Hey Kristie,

Try right-clicking the .exe and choosing Run as Administrator.

-Steve
Shaina on May 18, 2013 at 11:40 pm said:

“If you happen to be missing the installation files for Office 2010 Starter, you can actually find them available for download in various places.”
where can i find this download?
Steve Schardein on May 19, 2013 at 8:28 am said:

Thanks all for the continued kind comments. It is my pleasure to have helped!

@Shaina:

Unfortunately, I cannot legally provide a link to them. Sorry!
Claudia on May 20, 2013 at 7:06 pm said:

omg, you’re my hero! 🙂 I’ve just used this and it helped so much! I was so nervous, because I have to write my final thesis for University and I needed Word and it just stop working. Then I’ve tried all those complicated solutions I’ve found on Google and none of them worked. Buy yours is awesome!
Thank you so much! Keep up the good work! 🙂

(sorry for possible spelling or grammar mistakes. English is not my native language).
Claudia on May 20, 2013 at 7:08 pm said:

But* 😀
Eve on May 29, 2013 at 5:40 am said:

Hey Steve, thank you for the solution, it worked great for me. I did encounter some issues on the first step since I’m on a Swedish computer (which I’m guessing has different names for the same commands), so I skipped it and went directly to the clearc2r part. It worked fine, except now the Word icons on the word files are gone. I suppose I can live without them though, and my problem was solved, so thank you!
Nancy Beachler on June 9, 2013 at 9:02 pm said:

I can only echo all the comments before me! Thank you sooooo much for your post. Like many others, this issue came up very unexpectedly and I spent hours looking for a solution. Tried several and NONE, ZIP, ZERO, were of any help at all.
You are a techo wizard!! 🙂
mike on June 18, 2013 at 10:46 pm said:

i don’t know how to thank you steve but i really really love you now! ^_^ your a pro.!
Virginia on June 29, 2013 at 8:09 pm said:

wow! For weeks my hp pavilion laptop has been freezing, unable to connect to the internet, unable to use system restore or defrag and exhibiting a whole host of other issues! I had unistalled starter, downloaded some free software to try & make do & was about to unistall ms office altogether when I found this!!! I am surfing with ease, nothing has frozen & I am going to try out all the other nonworking things things now. If you don’t hear back from me, know that all is well and that you are a FREAKIN genius!!! Thank you soooooooooo much!!!!
KCarey on June 29, 2013 at 11:51 pm said:

THANK YOU!!! I’m a small business owner and have been doing my inventory on it. A program I didn’t think was running still (system mechanic) kept doing a registry cleanup. Suddenly, I wasn’t able to open it. This helped a great deal. Wasn’t a fix, as I have student/office and not starter. Caused some issues.
Melly Mel on July 5, 2013 at 7:20 pm said:

Hi Steve. I Ran across this when searching for options online to fix my click to run Microsoft office. Well I have everything else done except the last step. I am not that computer savvy when it comes to all of the % files or what not.When it says to- then navigate to the ProgramData directory containing the Office Starter installation files- what do I do when i get there? and then what do i click on to Run the SetupConsumerC2ROLW.exe file to install C2R once again, along with a fresh copy of Office 2010 Starter.
I appreciate the help in advance and look forward to hearing from you. By the way… Happy 4th of July to you and your family!
Steve Schardein on July 5, 2013 at 7:24 pm said:

Hey there Melly,

Happy 4th to you and yours as well!

If you can find the folder (and using the path I provided you should be able to; you can even just copy/paste it to a Windows Explorer folder window), it’s easy. Just Right-Click the SetupConsumerC2ROLW.exe file and choose Run As Administrator, and it will install for you. That’s all it takes!

-Steve
Alvonssatria on July 8, 2013 at 5:09 am said:

Thanks you dude, it’s work for me 😀
Bryan on July 9, 2013 at 3:59 pm said:

It took a little time, but IT WORKS FANTASTIC! Couldn’t find this solution anywhere else on the web. THANK YOU!!!!!
Robyn on July 15, 2013 at 2:19 pm said:

Steve…
Worked like a charm!
Thank you so very, very much!
Have a GREAT day!
Robyn 🙂
Pablo on August 13, 2013 at 5:00 am said:

Awesome, thanks. Helped.
JV on August 15, 2013 at 8:06 am said:

WOW! that worked. Thanks so much mate. I have been without office for almost a year, and during Uni, its really shit having to use 3rd party word processing programs. This site http://downloads.pcauthority.com.au/article/26083-microsoft_office_starter is where I re-downloaded the MS office trial.

Thanks again!
DC on August 20, 2013 at 12:16 pm said:

Wow, you saved me! This worked for repairing lost file associations for Starter 2010 caused by installing and then uninstalling Office 2007. None of the Microsoft solutions worked, but this was magical. Thank you!!!
Stevo on August 26, 2013 at 8:39 pm said:

Hi.My problem is I bought & downloaded 2010 Professional Plus when I bought the laptop,so never used the click 2 run thing.But now & then my hdd partition with letter Q changes it’s name to Click to Run Office Protected & loses 3TB till it corrects itself.Anyone else able to reproduce this?
Sreeni on September 2, 2013 at 11:06 pm said:

Hi Steve,

I am getting “Microsoft excel starter 2010 cannot be started. Try again or repair the product in the Control panel” error. I can’t find %PROGRAMDATA%\Microsoft\OEMOffice14\OStarter\en-us\ in my system. I tried the following command you suggested.
cmd /c md %SYSTEMDRIVE%\OfficeBackup & copy /y %PROGRAMDATA%\Microsoft\OEMOffice14\OStarter\en-us\*.* %SYSTEMDRIVE%\OfficeBackup & @echo Done! & @pause & explorer.exe %SYSTEMDRIVE%\OfficeBackup

First I see:
The system cannot find the path specified.
Done!
Press any key to continue . . .

Then I see the explorer window opened in C:\OfficeBackup folder which is empty.

Please advise. Thanks in advance for you time.

Sreeni
Steve Schardein on September 3, 2013 at 8:58 am said:

Hey Sreeni,

Sounds like the installation files simply do not exist on your PC then. If you previously removed the entry “Microsoft Office 2010” from the Programs and Features dialog then that’s why they’re gone. If that’s the case, a System Restore to a date before you removed that entry is in order next, followed by the full procedure as outlined above.

Alternatively, you can try right-clicking the ProgramData folder and choosing Restore previous versions… then choosing a date before you removed that entry and looking for the files in the directory detailed above.

Hope this helps.
Allie Clark on September 6, 2013 at 1:05 pm said:

Hi Steve! When I lost my Office starter the other day, I didn’t have time to read through your blog and follow these instructions, but I saved the page and say down to work on it today. When I was getting ready to follow your inx, I uninstalled Micro starter and click to run (for the umpteenth time)and also freeware ARO and Webroot antivirus (knowing that I had seen something from you about the danger of having my registry messed with by antivirus apps). At some point during my prep, a new Microsoft Office window popped up and I just went with that to reinstall Micro Office starter and VOILA! Nice new starter Office working! So I’m not sure if your fix was the magic or not, since I didn’t have to go through the steps, but I wanted to share with you anyway, since maybe uninstalling all of this helped, and may help others. Thank you for having the most complete discussion of this prob and the most clear instructions for a free fix out there. I’m unemployed, and losing my Office was a potential nightmare as I try to get resumes sent out and job applications open. Thanks a million. 🙂 Will donate some day when I am solvent again 😀
Anto on September 14, 2013 at 12:53 pm said:

Great job, man!
🙂
tnx!

ovo ni “informaticar starog kova” ne bi bolje napisao! 🙂
Chris on September 14, 2013 at 2:45 pm said:

Hi Steve,

I’ve followed the steps however when I go to reinstall the click to run via SetupConsumerC2ROLW.exe it gets to step 4/4 – “Setting up Microsoft Office Starter 2010” and then I get the error – There was a problem setting up Office Starter 2010, please try running set up again.

Any suggestions? I’ve tried running the program as an administrator but it made no difference. The wizard says there are definitely no other Office files to uninstall. Is it worth removing all click to install files (for other programs)?
Marion on September 18, 2013 at 9:05 pm said:

You made another Microsoft 2010 Starter user a happy camper! While this is not the program I ordinarily use, there are times I need it to share documents with people who do not use WordPerfect. Thank you so much for being so kind and sharing your knowledge.
Pingback: Office 2010 starter will not launch after working fine « PC Magician
Luisa on October 3, 2013 at 5:15 pm said:

Thanks thanks thanks!! This worked perfectly for me too!
R Barger on October 5, 2013 at 10:57 pm said:

BINGO! Thank you so much for a clear and concise solution to this problem. I was fortunate enough to find your page and resolve my computer problem in very short order. There is a lot of ‘help’ on the I-net that is not worth a hill of beans, wastes hours of precious time and adds to many mental breaks. You my friend, are just that- a friend, to many frustrated computer owners, because you are a great resource
sian on October 10, 2013 at 3:01 pm said:

where do i find the ProgramData directory???
sian on October 10, 2013 at 3:18 pm said:

You are an absolute genius, i have spent HOURS trawling through forum after forum and everything was useless, thank you sincerely from the bottom of my heart! Sorry if this is rude but I have a problem on my Windows 7 laptop with uninstalling certain programs due to a “fatal EXEtender.exe error” which i never installed yet seems to be required for a few uninstallations, any advice you can give me would be much appreciated 🙂 oh, and i just downloaded that C2ROLW.exe thing and Office installed on its own, i didn’t have to put the disc in to reinstall!
Jhonson SILALAHI on October 11, 2013 at 3:53 am said:

Its Work.. Terimakasih, Mauliate Godang, Thank You Very Much
christos on October 12, 2013 at 9:57 am said:

Thank you Steve.
Best post after hour of Googling. And I am no novice.
Water to totally remove the MS Office Click-to-Run since I use Open Office, nd reclaim drive R:
Worked great after repeated failures in other ways.
I was however left with the click2run icon even when I had successfully remapped R:
The following link cleaned that up:
http://www.askvg.com/how-to-fix-corrupt-drive-icons-in-my-computer/

Greetings from Athens Greece
Tania V. on October 15, 2013 at 11:13 pm said:

I followed your instructions step-by-step… and it works!!!!! 😀

Thank you very much, Steve!
skye on October 31, 2013 at 10:49 pm said:

How can you ‘save a copy of installation office 2010’ if you cant do anything with it. I can’t open it, can’t repair it, can’t uninstall it etc. So I can’t completely remove it because I cant save it since it’s damaged. If I completely remove it, I’ll have to pay for it elsewhere since it was preloaded. So this didn’t help me at all.
Steve Schardein on November 1, 2013 at 6:56 am said:

Hey Skye,

Sounds like Step 1 of my instructions above might be helpful to you. Good luck.

Steve
Q on November 3, 2013 at 10:02 am said:

Hi Steve, I followed all of your instructions all the way through step 4. I got stopped at step 5 because I could not locate the SetupConsumerC2ROLW.exe file from my download. I also checked my program list for Microsoft, and office starter has been completely removed.

Please assist, Thank you for your time.
Saskia on November 17, 2013 at 2:52 pm said:

Thank you very much kind sir. You just saved me a lot of time and frustration. Have a lovely day!
SeisoSam on November 19, 2013 at 3:27 pm said:

Under a deadline, suddenly this problem had me dead in the water. Searching LOTS of solutions, evaluating comments for depth and speed of solution. I cautiously followed your instructions, back-checking each step. Obviously you have saved me hours, if not days! Steve, you are Olympic Gold!
daveqtip on January 17, 2014 at 2:40 pm said:

Steve, Thank you. Your solution is the ONLY one that worked. Dave
Sallie on February 11, 2014 at 1:09 pm said:

Hi Steve,

Wow, almost three years later, and still going strong with the fix!

I have (had) MS Office 2010 Home and student Edition on my Win7 PC. It worked fine up until a few days ago. It was using the click2Run, which I totally hate.

Out of the blue, the whole suite disappeared from my PC. I had nothing left except for an empty folder. After a bit of research, I noticed Windows had done an Office security update on my PC, right around the time it got wiped. I tried to repair to no avail. Said I needed an Internet connection, which I had but was not seeing it.

My first thought was to restore, but figured it would reinstall the update. Then I found your site. This is what I did:

1. Made a backup of the %PROGRAMDATA%\Microsoft\OEMOffice14\OStarter\en-us.

2. Ran CleanC2R as instructed and now I have the Office 2010 Starter. However, I only have Word and Excel. I use to have the full package… OneNote, Access, etc.

3. Found this site that guided me on how to re-download a new copy of Office 2010. I had my key. D/L was successful.
http://www.accountingweb.com/article/how-reinstall-microsoft-office-when-you-dont-have-disc-or-download/222637

Now… Questions…
1. Don’t know where to start. Execute from the downloaded copy or execute a file from the \OStarter folder?

2. Is there a way to forgo the Click2Run? It’s truly slow and a pain. Requires an Internet connection to run.

3. Once I’m done, should I apply all updates, which one of them removed Office 2010?

Thank you for any assistance you may offer.

Sallie
Steve Schardein on February 12, 2014 at 1:02 pm said:

Hey Sallie,

Your situation is a bit different as it doesn’t pertain to the Starter Edition, but since it’s using C2R, some of the same situations apply.

First off:

– Execute from the downloaded copy

Yep, that’s what you want to do if you simply want to reinstall. However, if you are looking to go with an MSI-based installer instead, try this, starting with Step 5:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel-help/click-to-run-switch-%20to-using-an-msi-based-office-edition-HA101850538.aspx

After it’s all done, you can create a System Restore point and then apply all updates. It shouldn’t hurt your Office installation to do so. If it does, you can always revert to the Restore Point you created.

Hope this helps! 🙂

-Steve
Sallie on February 14, 2014 at 7:59 pm said:

Hi Steve,

Thanks for your reply.

Just shortly before your reply, I was getting anxious and decided to try to install what I had downloaded.

All went well, and my full office is now back. Opened every program (Word, Excel, OneNote, etc.), and all is well… without Click2Run! Bonus!!!

After the install, I created a new restore point… in case 🙂

But now, should I remove the office starter that I have (after following instructions here), or should I keep it in case?

And how in the world did my original office go from normal start to Click2Run? Mind boggling!

Finally, is the MSI thing the same as what I downloaded/installed?

Again, thank you for your help. Much appreciated.

Sallie… who has a love and hate relationship with Microsoft!
Lisa on February 15, 2014 at 6:08 pm said:

First of all, thank you for giving so much great advice to all of us. I did all that you described, downloaded a free version of Office 2010 from internet (since my computer had previously come with this but it had disappeared), the program now appears in my control panel and also in the start menu. However when I click on it, I get the message “Microsoft Word Starter 2010 cannot be opened. Try again or repair the product in Control Panel.” This also happens if I try to run Word as “administrator” as well. Hmmm…. any other ideas? Thank you so much!
Steve Schardein on February 15, 2014 at 6:38 pm said:

@Sallie,

I really don’t know how that would have happened, but it sounds like you’re all set now. It must have been an MSI-based installer that you got your hands on. Congrats!

@Lisa,

Hmm. Well, I can’t really comment on the safety/legitimacy of whatever copy of the program you located, but assuming you are using a good copy, I would simply follow the steps in this article again from the top. It sounds like one of the procedures might not have completed successfully.

Hope this helps! 🙂

-Steve
Sallie on February 17, 2014 at 8:46 pm said:

Hi Steve,

So, just tonight, I got a nice dialog box message entitled “Click 2 Run” saying that an update was available for Office 2010. OK or Cancel?. Guess which one I chose? LOL.

How can I now uninstall that Click 2 Run starter thing? I see it in Control Panel | Programs. Can I safely uninstall it without affecting my true Office installation?

Again, thank you for you time, much appreciated.

Sallie
PajamaFeet on February 21, 2014 at 3:37 am said:

I just started getting the dreaded Click2Run dialog, and I have yet to try your solution. For the record, I do not use a registry cleaner or anything else unusual; it’s a pretty bare-bones netbook. I never actually run Office on it, but I keep it installed and up to date with Windows Update. For me, the first Click2Run dialog popped up about a week after Windows Update installed some Office 2010 updates: KB2837583 (Office 2010), KB2817369 (InfoPath), KB2837595 (OneNote), KB2760601 (Sharepoint Workspace), KB2775360 (PowerPoint), KB2687567 (Outlook), KB2817396 (InfoPath). Several other updates were installed in this round, as well, and I suppose it could be any of them. I’m wondering if it might be better to roll back to the pre-update restore point.

Anyway, I just wanted to mention this because your blog is pretty adamant that the problem is caused by registry cleaners, which may be true, but it’s not the only cause.
Sallie on February 22, 2014 at 2:58 pm said:

I was actually successful in removing Click2Run from Control panel. Now I have to keep an eye on the Windows updates to make sure I don’t get tricked again.

Sallie
William on March 2, 2014 at 1:05 am said:

Steve,

Thank you. Your clean up program worked great. It removed C2R and the Q drive. I couldn’t find the original Office Starter 2010 file that came pre-installed on my HP (Windows 8) so I went to a site that offered a free download and got the following error at the end of the download process:

“There was a problem setting up Microsoft Office Starter 2010: There was a problem setting up Microsoft Office. Try running Setup again. If the problem continues, contact Microsoft Product Support.”

Any thoughts on this and how I can get Office Starter 2010 reinstalled? Did I do something wrong?

Thanks.
Steve Schardein on March 2, 2014 at 1:14 am said:

Hey William,

Glad to have helped. As for getting it installed, try rebooting first and then right click the file to run it as Administrator. See if that fixes it 🙂
William on March 2, 2014 at 1:37 am said:

Steve,

Running as administrator worked (so cool). Starter versions of Word and Excel were installed but when I tried to open each one I got the following error:

Click-to-Run Application Manager
Microsoft Word Starter 2010 cannot be opened. Try again or repair the product in Control Panel.

It appears that Click-to-Run was reinstalled along with Starter – both programs appear in Control Panel. But the Q drive has not reappeared.

Is this something you can work on remotely? Or perhaps you have a call-in service and can walk me through this over the phone. We are also having a few other issues.

Thanks.
William on March 2, 2014 at 2:04 am said:

Update – The Q drive is back!
Steve Schardein on March 2, 2014 at 9:13 pm said:

Excellent — so it’s resolved I presume?

Sounds like it is!

I can help remotely if you do ever need anything. I actually do it quite often for people who find my blog and decide they just want to have me handle something for them instead. Let me know if you ever need it — you can find my contact info at http://www.triplescomputers.com 🙂

Have a great night,

-Steve
Steve Schardein on March 7, 2014 at 12:05 am said:

@PajamaFeet, thanks for the heads-up on that; I have updated the wording of the original post for better accuracy.
Arun on March 11, 2014 at 6:35 pm said:

worked as charm. Thanks a Ton!!!
Paul on March 17, 2014 at 9:35 am said:

Hi Steve:

All your comments, answers and suggestions to everyone’s problems are amazing — thanks for your expertise!

After doing a lot of what’s been suggested to date this is where I am in my process:

When I run setupconsumerc2rolw.exe, steps 1 (prepare) and 2 (download) run fine, but step 3 (installing prerequisites) gets to 100% progress then rolls back to 0% and gives me the same error William got earlier this month:

“There was a problem setting up Microsoft Office Starter 2010: There was a problem setting up Microsoft Office. Try running Setup again. If the problem continues, contact Microsoft Product Support.”

I am running Win7 and the Microsoft programs that show as installed on Control Panel are: Silverlight, .Net 4.5.1, and Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable x64.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Paul
Steve Schardein on March 17, 2014 at 10:05 am said:

Hey Paul,

It’s my pleasure to have helped. See if this works:

Try rebooting first, and then right click the setupconsumerc2rolw.exe file and choose “Run as Administrator.” See if that fixes it.
Paul on March 17, 2014 at 5:35 pm said:

Hi Steve:

Still the same error when ran as administrator…failed on Step 3 (downloading pre-reqs).

Do you know if there any Microsoft common files I should remove or Microsoft programs I should uninstall to get rid of possible conflicting prerequisites? Perhaps the registries are corrupted?

Thanks.
Steve Schardein on March 17, 2014 at 9:41 pm said:

Hmm…

Try this:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=40201

Then after installing, try running the file to install Starter 2010 again.
Ann Elise McLaughlin on April 2, 2014 at 11:52 am said:

Steve, I am stuck with Office Starter not loading like the gentleman abovementioned. I tried installing the patch from your link but it said no file found needed for the patch. Please help, I am vedyfrustrated. Do you suggest I just download one of the free office suits like libreoffice?
Monty on April 4, 2014 at 4:04 pm said:

I have the click to run configuation error,too. So I use Libre Office to open my doc,docx, and excel files. Then if I want to create a doc,docx, or excel document , I use Libre Office and save as a doc,docx or excel file. If I attach these files to an email, the recipeint will opn them as a normal WORD or Excel document. (as long as they don’t have the Click-to Run Configuration error 🙂 )
Tom Hinderan on April 5, 2014 at 8:21 am said:

Awesome! I was afraid I would have to buy a whole new version of Office! Thank you so much!
Tim on April 7, 2014 at 12:20 pm said:

Hi Steve, it seems like a of people have had success with your instructions and I’m sure I would, but I really don’t know what I’m doing and I’m very concerned about losing my word documents. Instructions 2 3 & 4 all seem pretty straight forward to me but I get a bit lost on 1. and 5. Is there anyway you could make this a bit easier for me via email. Thanks Tim
Steve Schardein on April 7, 2014 at 10:41 pm said:

Hey Tim,

I’ve been providing this service for people remotely (at a price of course) if you’d rather take that approach. The only free support I provide is via my blog… it would simply be unsustainable for me to address everyone individually for free. If you read and follow these carefully it really is hard to screw it up however.

Thanks!
Courtney Smith on April 8, 2014 at 10:54 am said:

I seem to be having an issue after moving all of our local pc’s to a domain login. The domain users are only standard users but it seems to happen even if they are admins as well.
The problem is…..Every time the user logs off and logs back in Office Starter 2010 goes through the setup again and again every single time you start it up. Since most of them are standard users they are not able to open the program because it requires admin credentials on the prompt for updates.
This is so frustrating. How can I reinstall Office Starter to permanently keep the settings from when I open it the very first time? I can’t go around and enter my admin login every day on 8 pc’s. It’s so frustrating. I’ve tried removing and reinstalling but once the user logs off the settings are lost and the program acts like it’s a new install when they log back in and try to open a word or excel file. Please help if you have any ideas. I’m so frustrated.
Adam on May 20, 2014 at 8:44 pm said:

Hi Steve,

I just wanted to let you know that I had this Click-2-Run problem, and after a lot of Googling, my searches came up with useless websites.

Luckily for me, this reddit thread (http://www.reddit.com/r/techsupport/comments/1ddr0v/error_click2run_configuration_failure_upon/) directed me to this website. I followed all the steps (including this one : http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=40201) and now everything seems to work properly. 🙂

I just wanted to thank you for your time in making this webpage.

Thanks.
– Adam
Ayo on May 22, 2014 at 11:38 am said:

Hi Steve,

Thank you for your help here, it helped me when I first had a problem with Office Starter.

Now though, I have the same problem as Paul above but in my case, when I run setupconsumerc2rolw.exe, steps 1 (prepare) and 2 (download) run fine, but step 3 (installing prerequisites) gets to 20% progress then rolls back to 0% and gives me the same error that Paul and Williams got.

“There was a problem setting up Microsoft Office Starter 2010: There was a problem setting up Microsoft Office. Try running Setup again. If the problem continues, contact Microsoft Product Support.”

I have tried to run as administrator but to no avail, could you suggest another solution possibly?

Hope to hear from you soon.
Zac on May 24, 2014 at 2:32 am said:

Hi there Steve

Thanks for your help. I finally got Starter reinstalled and working fine after a few attempts, but now the Microsoft Office 2010 shortcut in the start menu is missing it’s icons and the icons on Word and Excel documents are missing too, even though they still open fine.
Do you know how to fix this? Also, the Word and Excel Starter icons do all show up in the Start Menu, along with all the tools with them.

Thanks
Danny on June 8, 2014 at 5:47 pm said:

I have the office 2010 click2run error and have downloaded your cleanup tool but it doesn’t appear to work for me. I am running windows 7. Once I go in and select the cleanc3r program and run nothing happens and if I select extract all then it wants a destination location but nothing ever goes into that location. I have tried to use windows uninstall program but it won’t unistall the click2run or the starter pack.
Jay-ar on June 10, 2014 at 10:03 pm said:

Hi steve,

I tried following your instructions but I missed the First part where you need to back up the files under the progdata, now I downloaded the MS Office starter 2010 from the downloadcrew website and after the installation is done. I tried running the MS WORD start ant it gives “microsoft word starter 2010 cannot be opened. Try again or repair the product in control panel”
when attempting repair for ms office starter – “click-2-Run package registration failure” – it goes back to problem 1… i tried many things now, really need your help on this..

Thanks
Steve Schardein on June 10, 2014 at 11:05 pm said:

Jay-ar,

Sounds crazy, but I would do the whole process over again. If done correctly and completely it should fix that problem.

Let me know if it works!

To everyone else just before that post… my apologies for having not replied, I have been very busy this month (just had our second child!). I will try to parse and reply these soon if possible. I’m glad you’ve found this page helpful!

-Steve
enya on June 16, 2014 at 8:35 am said:

hi will any of my files be deleted or messed with if i do this thank you please get back to me as reallly need to use microsoftt office thanks
Peter Mills on June 24, 2014 at 3:26 am said:

Congratulations on the birth of your second child. I hope mother and baby are doing well and that nights are not too sleepless.

My nights are less sleepless now thanks to your help with this problem. It all went pearshaped on my daughters laptop a couple of weeks before her big UK exams.

I looked everywhere – and I do mean everywhere – on how to fix this problem. I shied away from following your instructions – your own views on registry cleaners are quite right and I am very nervous about any little program that can be downloaded from someone’s website that promises to fix everything.

But nothing else worked so I followed your instructions and ‘bingo’ now my daughter can use word & excel again. A big thank you from me – and on my daughter’s behalf.
Felipe on June 24, 2014 at 3:29 pm said:

Steve!!!! Thank you so much for your website and all the explanations. I got a little problems in the beginning, but after reading almost all of the posts and your kindly answers, I did made it!!! I must say.. you are the BEST!!
Thank you, once again.
gorik on July 3, 2014 at 5:01 am said:

Thanks
worked like a charm!!!
Rhodri on July 9, 2014 at 4:48 am said:

Worked like a charm, Thanls !!!
Admin on July 18, 2014 at 9:51 pm said:

Thanks!! My WORD is normal back!! People follow guide step by step, I didn´t restart one time and it says Click2Run pack registration error or sth like that and I need to do everything again.
Edward on July 31, 2014 at 4:15 am said:

thank you very much.. it’s work..
Jenny on August 5, 2014 at 10:27 pm said:

This was the answer I have spent days researching for. My computer isn’t the fastest and it still took a while to complete the whole process, but it worked perfectly. Thanks so much.
Ron Grainger on August 19, 2014 at 3:13 pm said:

Such an excellent solution!! I don’t know what Microsoft think they are doing but in recent times they have removed the option to reinstall the starter version so anyone uninstalling loses the programme altogether. On top of that it is sometimes impossible to uninstall in the first place. Your solution covers all bases. The best I have seen and I am an IT pro. A five star solution, many congratulations. Ron.
Alisa on August 19, 2014 at 10:57 pm said:

I am a complete novice and Im having trouble figuring out how to complete step 1. Is there anyway you could post step by step of how to find and backup a copy of the required installation files for Office 2010. Thanks
lewnic on August 19, 2014 at 10:58 pm said:

I just don’t know what to say other than …. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU

I was about to throw my computer from the window.
Steve Schardein on August 20, 2014 at 1:22 pm said:

Guys,

Thanks so much for all the kind feedback. It really means a lot; I’m thrilled this post helped all of you!

For anyone with further questions:

Please check the comments thread for my replies as many have already been answered. If you still need help, you can ask here, but this blog is merely free support, so I can’t promise I will have time to explain everything. I *do* offer this service remotely for a small fee (to cover the time) if you really are struggling with it; I’ve performed it already for dozens of people who’ve found this very page.

I hope this helps!

-Steve
Jenny on August 27, 2014 at 2:42 am said:

I’ve gotten through all steps but the last. It says I cannot install 32 bit version because I have 64 bit?
RobinM on August 28, 2014 at 1:33 am said:

I seem to have a strange variation of this issue. I’ve been using Office starter 2010 for years, but then recently started getting the error “Click-to-Run Application Manager” “Microsoft Word Starter 2010 cannot be opened. Try again or repair the product in Control Panel.”

Guided by comments on MS support pages, I uninstalled and re-installed via control panel, and opened a Word document in Word and agreed the license agreement. BUT could not open it a second time! Same error!

More Googling brought me to here, and I’ve followed your procedure exactly (three times) with the same result. I should mention that offcln.exe reports no files to remove (even though I select complete removal). I have however deleted “Microsoft Office” from the control panel, once, after running offcln.exe – it has not come back after running SetupConsumerC2ROLW, or since (though MS Office Starter 2010 and MS Click-to-Run 2010 are back in the control panel of course).

Interestingly I can open and edit multiple .xlsx spreadsheets multiple times (they open with Excel Starter 2010), but only get lucky with the very first .docx document that I open after your procedure.

Any suggestions?
RobinM on August 28, 2014 at 1:41 am said:

BTW: My hunch is that installing an MS update was related as I installed a batch around the time I first noticed the office starter 2010 issue. I certainly wasn’t doing anything with the registry at the time, though I admit I ran CC sometime last year, in the middle of a frustrating WiFi issue, but office starter has worked fine since… til just recently!

Wondering if I should perhaps try going back to a restore point?
Steve Schardein on August 28, 2014 at 8:01 am said:

@Jenny:

That’s odd; under Programs and Features in the Control Panel, do you see any 64-bit Office versions installed? If not you may have some stray files in Program Files that are throwing off the installer (I wouldn’t recommend manually deleting any of this stuff however without a sound backup first).

@RobinM:

That’s a really tough one. It sounds to me that it possibly indicates a much deeper problem than simply an Office installation corruption issue. It could be:

A) Permissions
B) Corrupt Filesystem
C) Corrupt Installer Database
D) Corrupt System Files

These can all be repaired, though you might consider professional help if the basics don’t work. I would probably start with the Filesystem and then System Files and move down to the other, more specific possibilities after those fundamentals are taken care of.

1) Filesystem (first!): Open an elevated Command Prompt (Start > type cmd > Right-click Command Prompt and choose Run as Administrator), type chkdsk /f c:, press ENTER, Reboot

2) System File Check/Repair: Open an elevated Command Prompt, type sfc /scannow, press ENTER, Reboot.

3) Corrupt Permissions: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/astebner/archive/2006/09/04/solving-setup-errors-by-using-the-subinacl-tool-to-repair-file-and-registry-permissions.aspx

4) Corrupt Installer Database: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/971187

Good luck.

-Steve
Riya on October 10, 2014 at 7:14 pm said:

Just wanted to say Thank-you! I’ve spent hours living with the problem and trying to fix it. Finally it is fixed!
Microsoft should be fined for writing software which is not compatible with it’s own OS.
Arnie Killebrew on October 18, 2014 at 10:35 am said:

So fortunate that you were able to grab a copy of that utility before Microsoft deleted it. I cannot help but wonder if MS deliberately broke the starter edition in hopes of coercing users into buying a paid version.

Good work!
Adam on October 23, 2014 at 4:50 am said:

Worked – Only solution I found that does
Edward Martin III on October 25, 2014 at 5:31 pm said:

Thank you — this was the one that worked! 🙂
Ty Carter on November 10, 2014 at 1:52 pm said:

Steve: I just came across this article and it is spot on.. I am a small IT solutions provider in Eastern NC and have been very frustrated with this issue that MS inflicted on us… Your solution, if any indication of your business model and services are spot on and I can’t thank you enough…. You saved me a bunch of headache and billable time to the endusers… and I know they thank you as well.. I have given you credit on my website as well as to my clients that I used your solution for.

Thanks again…

Ty Carter, President
Strategic Network Consultants, Inc.
524 East 9th Street
Washington, NC 27889
252-946-0351
http://www.strategicconsultants.net
Ty Carter on November 10, 2014 at 1:55 pm said:

Forgot to post permalink for your reference;
http://www.strategicconsultants.net/?page_id=87
Gordon Hall on November 11, 2014 at 3:50 pm said:

After hours of stumbling through dead-end Google hits on Click2Run from Microsoft and other “experts” I finally found a your solution. It worked like a charm!
You are a breath of fresh air.
Thanks,
Gordon
HK on November 12, 2014 at 6:52 am said:

I removed files with your cleaning tool. Downloaded free version of 2010 starter. I did have this free version when I purchased the laptop. However, after reloading it is failing and stating – click-2-run package registration failure. Please guide.
Steve Schardein on November 12, 2014 at 10:00 am said:

@HK,

It is Microsoft’s removal tool, not mine. If you are still receiving the error I would advise you to follow the process carefully once more. If it persists you may need professional assistance to get it working, which I do provide remotely for a fee if is necessary.

@Everyone else,

Thank you much for the kind feedback! I’m thrilled that after three years this solution is still helpful to people.

Steve
HK on November 13, 2014 at 10:36 am said:

I got message that Q:\ is not accessible. I could not find anywhere. May be that is causing this problem. I deleted everything and downloaded version from the internet of office starter and followed your instructions. But the same message. Do not know how to fix it.

Thanks,
HK
HK on November 13, 2014 at 4:53 pm said:

Dear Steve,
Thank you for your guidance. I again cleaned and rebooted everything. Fortunately there is no click-2-fail message. However, my word icon has changed to wordpad and all my documents open in wordpad. Please guide. Thanks for all your time.
HK
Dan on November 25, 2014 at 2:09 pm said:

Even for a computer idiot like myself, you have made it very simple to follow and resolve this issue. Thank you
Dan on November 25, 2014 at 2:13 pm said:

The icons on my documents have changed, just like another friend posted earlier as well. Do you have a solution for that?
Steve Schardein on November 25, 2014 at 2:21 pm said:

@Dan @HK,

Sounds like you might just be talking about a file association issue. If so, it’s easy; right-click the file, select Open With > Choose Default Program, choose Word 2010 Starter or something that says “Virtualization Handler” or similar, and click OK. It should open and fix all the rest of the files of that type (DOC or DOCX).
Dan on November 25, 2014 at 3:27 pm said:

Thanks for the insight. I tried it but I still got the same icons. I associated the files with word from office 2014(trial offer) and that worked. But I dont know what will happen when that expires!
Patty C. on December 6, 2014 at 5:35 pm said:

Kudos…..like everyone else I spent hours trying to fix this until I found this site.
findus on December 7, 2014 at 7:56 am said:

merci beaucoup…
Charles on December 10, 2014 at 11:16 am said:

It worked as a charm in the spanish version as well you should mention it in the description.

Once again, thanks!
Mark on December 13, 2014 at 7:12 pm said:

Thanks so much for the instructions on how to fix this problem. I have 3 computers with Office Starter 2010 and as part of the December Windows update this week only one computer said it needed a click-to-run update, which I went with. It didn’t complete since it claimed there was no internet (which was false), then got tangled up when I turned off updates (but it had shown by then updated to 14.x.xxxx.5002 – the others had 5001) and followed other MS forum advice on uninstall, etc. Starter was gone from programs&features but there in the program list with the “configuration failure” if you invoked Word or Excel.
During the earlier Starter update earlier this year, it took quite some time to complete what appeared to be a fairly big download. Other forums had people scratching their heads over Microsoft’s “home made” look to the update pop-up (like, was it a legit update?). I always apply Windows security updates, but I’m turning off updates on Office Starter on all 3 computers for now. I certainly don’t need a “features” update and I guess I’ll take my chances with whatever security holes there may be with the versions I now have.
Ben.Little on December 22, 2014 at 1:47 am said:

Dear Steve, it seems like i cannot get your program to work,
despite follow your instruction down to the -T.
My error msg says
There’s a problem setting up M.S Office 2010,
Try running setup or contact M.S. Support.
Could you comment ?
p.s where does msi.zap comes into play ???
sincerely.
B.Litt
Luiz Stocco on January 2, 2015 at 11:31 am said:

THANK YOU!!! This is the best tutorial to fix that problem. Fast, easy, worth it.
4-Candles on January 9, 2015 at 10:48 am said:

Excellent, almost lost hope until i found this. Fixed issue on Win 7 PC after someone partially ran the full Office download then aborted. It stopped the Starter Version running as it kept tying to downlaod features each time it ran and i could not remove it or re-install it
bishb15 on January 11, 2015 at 4:55 pm said:

offcln.exe didn’t work. It said there were no files to be removed, however, I continued on with the rest of the instructions and Office Starter was repaired successfully.
Thanks for being a PC wizard!
Steve Clark on January 13, 2015 at 10:31 am said:

Hi Steve!

Just wanted to post a heartfelt ‘THANKS!!!’ for this post. Nearly 4 years down the line and still working

After much internet trawling, this was the solution that worked.

Followed your instructions above and managed to get my Office 10 Starter resurrected ‘first time’, after reluctantly opening up my netbook for Microsoft updates and letting it stomping it into the dirt!

My netbook lives to fight another day!

Cheers!!
Steve
MJ Woods on January 13, 2015 at 8:13 pm said:

Excellent job Steve. My hat is off to you. My Microsoft Word 2010 Starter wouldn’t work and I tried everything. I must have spent hours trying to correct the problem and was about to shell out money only to stumble across your website. Then all my problems were fixed. Thank you again for the great work
Debbie on February 12, 2015 at 3:33 pm said:

What am I supposed to do when this says to extract all files?
Marc on February 23, 2015 at 4:50 am said:

Hello Steve,
My Office Starter was broken and I can’t find the necessary files to reinstall,
so I just wanted to do a clean uninstall, which I hadn’t managed before stumbling on your web page. A great thanks for making the removal tool available and making it easy to use!
Marc
Diane on March 1, 2015 at 5:49 pm said:

I just spent a few hours perusing every help site/forum imaginable trying to solve the Office 2010 Starter problem. Every “correction” gave me a new computer message to look up. I ran through most of the ones mentioned in this thread. I was pretty sure my problem was self-inflicted and had something to do with iolo’s System Mechanic –which I had just used to clean up another problem. The problem wasn’t really iolo, it was me not checking what had been done. The solution was simple: I went to my System Mechanics History>Safety Net and undid the registry changes that had been made (undoing the change action and then turning it back on). It was the breadcrumb you dropped in your blog that led me out of the woods and allowed my files to open. Thank you!!!
Chris on March 11, 2015 at 7:56 am said:

Seriously Microsoft should be paying you royalties!!! Well done perfect outcome first time around.
Chris
ro'b on March 16, 2015 at 1:20 am said:

hi all,

super late to this party. i am ashamed to admit i have been working on this intermittently for 24 hours. i sure wish i stumbled upon this one before i uninstalled starter.

based on another set of directions, see below (that seemed to work for everyone who already had plain ms office 2010 in their start menu programs) i removed my office starter in ANTICIPATION of using the ms office icon to reinstall starter per the directions.

i HAVE an ms office ICON in my start menu, but it must have been empty behind the scene. (i bought a floor model or open item at retail and they did not have any software to go with it). apparently there is no program to accompany this item. i didn’t think to check for ms OFFICE in control panel add programs before i uninstalled ms office STARTER.

i remember that buy use window when i had issues with starter once before that i fixed, but now i can’t even get that far because theres no office.

any suggestions aside from a restore point?

this is what everyone else used
You might want to uninstall Office Starter and re-install.
Uninstall it from the control panel.
When it is done, go back to the Windows Start menu and programs and click on Microsoft Office 2010, then select Use in the first dialog and than Open on the second one.
That will re-install Office Starter.
Kenza on May 3, 2015 at 2:07 pm said:

Haaaaaa Thank you soo much 😀 😀 !! U just saved my life
Wish you aaall the best !
Thanks again ! 😀
Andrew on May 16, 2015 at 8:54 pm said:

Excellent help given here!
I’ve got a different error..
I’ve installed Starter on win8-no problem except when I click on excel or word I get “this program has compatibility issues” I’ve installed it on 8 a few times and never had this one.
My guess is MS has figured out a way of disabling it on Win8 through one of their sneaky updates???
Thanks for any help
design my own shirt on May 29, 2015 at 9:48 am said:

Hi my friend! I want to say that this post is
amazing, great written and include almost all vital infos.
I would like to see more posts like this .
dave on June 14, 2015 at 4:07 am said:

I have gone round in circles a few times now since 21st may, the attachment I have downloaded and is in my downloads folder, I have extracted. Right clicked and as administrator see the box appear to run then a message require reboot.
Upon reboot ( I`m using restart but have tried with power off too) the box appears saying cleanup is wanting to be run, runs it.
another reboot.
offcln then run and from the three options I have tried all three and there is no office files found to remove.
reboot.
have created the file structure to en-us and put the setupconsumer in this and clicked to set up.
appears to go through 4 steps with no errors (on other attempts it seems to do only step 1 and then give up as though something was already present)
once that’s complete I find a file that is in word and get the message that needs repair, so go to repair, that fails with an error.
after running all of the cleaning there still seems to be files and folders with wording related to click to run and office kicking about….
such as C:\ProgramData\{1b33a75f-c0ba-f77e-1b33-3a75fc0b9d7f} which contains three files one being called Microsoft-office-2010.dat
another in programdata/virtualizedapplications a folder called {90140011-0066-0409-0000-0000000FF1CE} which contains loads of items with names that have c2r in then, icons for word,
am I looking at a system restore or am I missing a point somewhere?
dave on June 18, 2015 at 2:04 pm said:

still been working on this, thought I`d revisit all the posts above and found a post regarding the Microsoft KB file as posted here :-
Hmm…

Try this:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=40201

Then after installing, try running the file to install Starter 2010 again.

I initially tried it and it said that no products found, so I ran the setupc2r and then ran this file and it went through the initial settings of the product, what file type to save as, do I want updates etc.

I`ve opened 2 documents so far so good.

thanks for pulling all the info together, windows 7, 64 bit sorted.
Claudio Andreoli on July 21, 2015 at 6:54 pm said:

Hi Steve,
Your hints and tips they really work for me.
I am thankfull.
Very, Very Good job.
Best Regards
Claudio Andreoli from Brazil.
EL on August 23, 2015 at 9:28 pm said:

TQVM! I highlighted and searched Office Starter 2010 and this came up; http://www.techspot.com/downloads/6255-microsoft-office-starter-2010.html downloaded it reinstalled automatically and was back to working like normal again. Have a nice day and an awesome week | end ahead! <3 Fpv Reality
Bill Rudnick on September 22, 2015 at 4:13 pm said:

TO: EL
Thanks so much. I was unable to resolve issue with MS, but your directions led me to solving the problem.
Carol Ng on September 23, 2015 at 9:08 pm said:

Hi,
I am having the click-2-run configuration failure when I click my Word Starter. Are you able to help me to fix it remotely?
Thank you.
Carol
Steve Schardein on September 23, 2015 at 9:35 pm said:

Hello Carol,

I can probably help, yes. The cost is usually quite reasonable. Get in touch with me via phone during business hours if you’d like to set something up in the next few days. My number is (502) 233-4393.

Steve
Lucy on September 27, 2015 at 1:20 pm said:

Hi Steve,
I did all the process, but it keeps giving me assertion debug problem at each step. And when I try to run the Microsoft Office starter 2010, it says “there was a problem seeting up Microsoft Office Starter 2010. There was a problem setting up Microsft Office. Try running setup again…”. I really need help… Thank you in advance!
Lucy on September 27, 2015 at 1:24 pm said:

Hi Steve,
I posted a comment above. I also tried to uninstall the Microsoft office but it didn’t work. Very desesperated…
Max on October 11, 2015 at 9:02 am said:

Hello.
I was unable to instal Windows 10 which stopped on encountering some cilck2run remnants.
Your tool was the only one who succeeded in succesfully uninstalling those old Office 2010 softwares.
Thank you for clearing the way !
Max
Sunny on October 24, 2015 at 11:14 pm said:

perfect.. thanks
Lori on November 10, 2015 at 1:06 pm said:

OMG, you are a life saver!!! Thank you so much for a solution that worked!
Shazia on November 14, 2015 at 12:31 am said:

I don’t understand what needs to be done in the 1st step you mentioned. Where can I find the files? I don’t understand. Please help me out. Thank you.

First, be sure to have a copy of the required installation files for Office 2010. Make a backup of them if you don’t have access to them elsewhere by copying the following directory to another location:
%PROGRAMDATA%\Microsoft\OEMOffice14\OStarter\en-us

^^Don’t get this^^
Shazia on November 14, 2015 at 1:12 am said:

I cannot find this file in my c drive. I have un-hidden all the folders, but I am only able to go up till here: %PROGRAMDATA%\Microsoft

There is NO- OEMOffice14\OStarter\en-us

Please help me out. Everything was working perfectly a few days ago and I haven’t even done any updates lately.

Thank you!
Shazia on November 16, 2015 at 7:50 pm said:

Will I receive a reply? or not? I have left 2 posts earlier and they have not been answered yet.
Steve Schardein on November 16, 2015 at 8:18 pm said:

Shazia,

1) Not everyone gets a reply; sorry. This is a FREE blog through which I provide FREE help outside of my insanely busy schedule. I have many people contact me and offer to pay to have me help them resolve issues remotely. This is always an option; obviously I must prioritize paid business over free assistance.

2) If you cannot find the folder, the installation files are not there, and you cannot perform this procedure without acquiring them. As previously mentioned, they are available for (rather risky) download elsewhere on the internet, but it is also of questionable legality. Your best option is thus probably to consider an inexpensive license to the newer Office versions (Office 365 Individual is available for just $6/mo, or if you are a student, you can often get it for free or at a deep discount).

Sorry!

-Steve
Paul on November 18, 2015 at 1:49 am said:

Thanks for your blog post. I appreciate that I’m a few years behind here, and there are other costly options, but I’m in a place where I have to be able to fix this slightly older laptop.

Prior to finding your blog, I followed an HP link (laptop is an HP) that recommended uninstalling and re-installing Starter, which seems to have bombed my installation directory. I’ve downloaded the Starter setup program files, but when I try to run it as admin, I get the following error: “The files required to set up Microsoft Office Starter 2010 cannot be loaded. Check your Internet connection, and then try again.” Any thoughts? Thanks in advance.
Paul on November 19, 2015 at 2:23 am said:

Thanks for your call today. I searched for the %programdata% after revealing my hidden files and folders, restored to a date prior to my previous deletion, and it doesn’t show any of the required installation files. My previous downloads of the installation files are still failing. It looks like we’re going to have to find a different solution.
Oleg on November 20, 2015 at 8:56 pm said:

Steve,
Thanks a lot for nice Instruction!
I recovered MS Office at my HP pavilion dv7t which suddenly failed few days ago without any visible reason. HP and Microsoft support didn’t help.
Comment:
-I was not able to extract msizap.exe from provided archive so I downloaded it from this location: http://nerdoftherings.net/wp/?p=66
-On Windows 7 MS office Installer is located: C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\OEMOffice14\OStarter\en-us
Shazia on December 7, 2015 at 6:02 pm said:

Thank you Steve for taking the time to reply. I was able to download the complete MS Office 2016 (offline install) for free. Thank you once again.
Jules on January 2, 2016 at 8:14 am said:

Instead of stopping at step 1, it now stopped at step 4, but it still did not work. Will try again.
Jules on January 2, 2016 at 9:03 am said:

Thank you, now it worked (I had not used the correct directory)
Elizabeth D. on January 27, 2016 at 7:42 pm said:

Thank you!
Zader on January 30, 2016 at 10:33 pm said:

Holy smokes, man. I’ve been going absolutely mental trying to fix this on three different machines. Could never actually deal with the registry issues and the like.

You are a life saver.
Pavel Pokorny on March 7, 2016 at 4:15 am said:

Hi, works like a charm! You save me a lot of time and rescued me from heebie-jebbies. Enjoy your $2 beer 😉
Cheryll on May 28, 2016 at 6:36 am said:

Please tell me where to find offcin.exe. I have searched and searched.
Sierra on June 9, 2016 at 4:55 pm said:

Thank you for this blog, you seem to know what you’re talking about more than the microsoft support people.
I’ve tried following your instructions, but whenever it comes to reinstalling, it freezes at 20% of step 3 of 4, installing prerequisites before giving me a message that it failed.
“There was a problem setting up Microsoft Office Starter 2010. If the problem continues, contact Microsoft Support.”
Any ideas?
Latanga on June 26, 2016 at 10:09 pm said:

Thank you Thank you. Did I say thank you? Thank you so much
David on July 14, 2016 at 4:54 pm said:

I find it so strange that my Win 10 laptop worked successfully but my Win 10 PC doesn’t work with Office Starter 2010. 🙁 I might have to find a batch that works with Win 10. I know there’s a batch for 8.1.
Daniel on November 23, 2016 at 9:32 pm said:

Hi,

I have a big problem with this. Followed your steps, finally is not visible in Porgrams anymore but after reinstallation it says something Like “Failure to find Click to run” or something.
Also I do not have in my computer Program Data anywhere.
Steve Schardein on November 23, 2016 at 10:38 pm said:

Hey Daniel, this post is nearly 6 years old now. Office Starter has long been defunct and it’s quite possible it may not ever work any longer.

You can try again and it may work. But ultimately, the best solution may simply be a cheap version of Office, or a free alternative.

Steve
d kenning on November 29, 2016 at 3:27 pm said:

Steve – the Microsoft Office Starter 2010 that came with my computer is giving this message: Microsoft Office has encountered a problem with licensing and will need to close.

Then it shuts down. Anyway to fix it? It was free in the HP computer I bought 2009.

Thanks. dk
d kenning on November 30, 2016 at 3:35 pm said:

The Microsoft 2010 Starter came with computer – now it reads: Microsoft has encountered a problem with licensing and will need to close. Then it shuts down.

what to do?
laura on December 13, 2016 at 9:24 am said:

THANKYOU THANKYOU THANKYOU!!!!!!
the wonders of the internet…your blogpost from 2011…has made me HAPPY in 2016!!
i’m grateful to have found your post…followed your instructions and now i can open ALL my SAVED doc’s!!!! whew!! thanks again for helping me out!! 🙂
diane on February 3, 2017 at 12:10 am said:

Steve,
I am having this issue with my Office starter 2010 too…very frustrating!!!
I have searched the internet for a free download to starter 2010 but cant seem to find it and I dont want to do this procedure until I do.
I know its old but I have some documents I really want to keep accessing. Can you help me?
Diane
Barbara on April 5, 2017 at 1:41 pm said:

Thank you so MUCH!! Usually I read about things like this, and it doesn’t work, but after reading all the comments I thought it would be worth the time spent. It did work like a charm, but still baffled as to why it happened from one day to the next with no changes to my computer. I only allow things to run that I want except for antivirus, so just don’t know what happened here. But you were a life saver for me! Thank you!!!!!
Clifford Easden on April 23, 2017 at 9:50 pm said:

I tried System Mechanic on a trial basis and lost my Office 10 starter.
I got the Click – 2 Run Configuration Failure.
I see where several people are happy getting Office 10 back but could not find how it was done.
Can you help me with this?
Clifford.
Pauli on October 28, 2017 at 1:29 pm said:

Thank you very much. I actually encountered this issue on my grandparent’s PC when I was helping them via TeamViewer. I couldn’t even access Programs and Features, since it always displayed just the Office installation dialogue. Luckily with your guide I was able to fix it. Thank you a ton!
Jerilyn on January 3, 2018 at 10:05 am said:

I know this thread is older, but just in case. I am currently working for a smaller privately owned company. The company actually does not use microsoft office 10, they are using 2007. But this error pops up every time I try to open a word file, mind you, it is only word. Not excel, or powerpoint. It looks as if they may have installed a starter on the 10 but I am not sure.
Doug on January 17, 2018 at 6:43 pm said:

A HUGE “THANK YOU” for posting this solution. I was banging my head on this problem for several days until I found your post. It worked like a charm and I feel far less frustrated and stressed! (SMILE) Thank You!!
Ryan Hanson on June 6, 2018 at 9:55 am said:

I can’t seem to find SetupConsumerC2ROLW.exe anywhere on my computer…
Ryan Hanson on June 6, 2018 at 10:00 am said:

Actually I found it and followed the run as administrator and this pops up… The files required to setup Microsoft office starter 2010 cannot be loaded. Check your internet connection then try again. I am connected to the internet. Do I need to download something else or did I have corrupted files or something get deleted for me to get this message?

Thanks
Akshay on March 15, 2019 at 6:29 am said:

hey Steve
thanks for such a helping post.
why don’t you post this on answers.microsoft.com for people facing problem in uninstalling Click-to-run.
Smedly on July 15, 2019 at 1:24 pm said:

It removed it alright. And I mean everything office related.
There is no “SetupConsumerC2ROLW.exe” to be found anywhere on my computer.

I did a search at the prompt level use cmd run as admin and searched from the root directory with the /s switch and it’s not on the hard drive at all.

As a matter of fact, there is no longer any folder named office on my computer. C:\ProgramData\Microsoft has no such folder in it using admin privs now.
It was there before I ran the cleaner but not now.
Jordan I Schroll on September 30, 2019 at 10:38 am said:

Only fix I found
Mark DuPriest on November 1, 2021 at 6:09 pm said:

Did not work for me.
My OS Win 7 64.
The error message says I have Windows Office Starter v 32. I don’t think this is accurate. I am now using Revo uninstaller (after doing the process to repair\remove as oultined in the directions here) to remove all remants of Starter and reinstall from scratch.
Steve Schardein on November 1, 2021 at 6:35 pm said:

@Mark,

This article is from over 10 years ago, so I’d be surprised if it still worked. But regardless of that, considering you’re still on Win 7, I’m honestly surprised *anything* is still working for you.

Steve

Triple-S Computers Blog – Louisville, KY computer repair specialist

Tips from the trenches of advanced computer repair

SOLUTION: “Click2Run Configuration Failure” when Office 2010 Starter is launched

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