OFF2000: Utility to Completely Remove Remaining Office CD1 Files and Registry Entries

• Microsoft Office 2000

SUMMARY

A utility that helps you completely remove Microsoft Office 2000 is available from Microsoft. The Office 2000 CD1 File and Registry Eraser Utility removes most of the files and Windows registry settings that remain on the computer after you remove Office. This utility is designed to be used on stand-alone computers or workstations. You should not use this utility to completely clean a working copy of Office from a computer. You should only run this utility after you run the Setup program for Office 2000 and click Remove Office.

When you expand the Eraser2k.exe package, the following four files are extracted:

   Oclean9.dll
   Offcln9.exe
   Offcln9.opc
   Readme.txt    

MORE INFORMATION

The following file is available for download from the Microsoft Download Center. Click the file name below to download the file:

Eraser2k.exe

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/search.asp

ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/softlib/mslfiles

--------------------------------------------------------------------
    README for Office 2000 File and Registry Eraser Utility
                 for Microsoft Office 2000
--------------------------------------------------------------------

            (c) Copyright Microsoft Corporation, 1999

Contents
--------

  I. System Requirements
 II. Overview
III. Using the Office 2000 File and Registry Eraser Utility
 IV. Known Issues

I. System Requirements
----------------------

To use this utility, you need:

 - A computer with an 80486 (or 486) or higher processor

 - 1 megabyte (MB) free hard disk space 

 - Microsoft Windows 95

   -or-

 - Microsoft Windows 98 or Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition (SE)

   -or-

 - Microsoft Windows NT Workstation version 4.0

NOTE: This has not been tested on Windows 2000.

II. Overview
------------

Purpose:

The utility removes most of the files and Windows registry settings that 
remain on the computer after you remove Microsoft Office 2000. This utility 
is designed to be run after you run the Setup program for Office 2000 and 
click Remove Office. Although not all Office 2000 files and registry 
settings are removed, the settings that remain do not harm your system. It 
is expected that after using this utility, that you will again install 
Office onto your system.

Obtaining More Information About the Utility:

For information about the files and registry settings that the utility 
removes, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base 
on the World Wide Web:

   Q219423  OFF2000: How to Completely Remove Microsoft Office
   (http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q219/4/23.asp)

The Microsoft World Wide Web server, http://support.microsoft.com, contains 
technical support information about Microsoft products. To access the 
Microsoft Knowledge Base on the World Wide Web, follow these steps:

1. Connect to Support Online at the following Internet address:

      http://support.microsoft.com/support/search/default.asp

   NOTE: If you've never visited this site before, the site requires you to 
   register.

2. In the "My search is about" list, click All Microsoft Products.

3. Under "I want to search by," click "Specific article ID number."

4. In the "My question is" box, type the article ID of the article that you 
   want to see. For example, type "Q162192" (without the quotation marks).

5. Click Go (next to the "My question is" box).

   This search will return one or several article titles. 

6. Click the title of the article to view it.

NOTE: Because the support.microsoft.com site is constantly changing, the 
steps for accessing the Knowledge Base on the Web may change. If this 
occurs, follow the steps on the Support Online home page at the following 
address:

   http://support.microsoft.com/support/default.asp

III. Using the Office 2000 File and Registry Eraser Utility
-----------------------------------------------------------

IMPORTANT: This utility modifies the registry. Before you run the utility, 
make sure you understand how to restore the registry if a problem occurs. 
For information about how to do this, view the "Restoring the Registry" 
Help topic in Regedit.exe or the "Restoring a Registry Key" Help topic in 
Regedt32.exe.

Using the utility incorrectly may cause serious problems that may require 
you to reinstall your operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that 
problems resulting from the incorrect use of this utility can be solved. 
Use the Office 2000 File and Registry Eraser Utility at your own risk.

Note that you should back up the registry before you modify it. If you are 
running Windows NT, you should also update your Emergency Repair Disk 
(ERD).

Downloading the Utility:

Download the Eraser2k.exe file to your hard disk. When you double-click the 
file, this Readme.txt file will appear and the following four files will 
expand into the same folder as the Eraser2k.exe file:

   Oclean9.dll
   Offcln9.exe
   Offcln9.opc
   Readme.txt

Command Line Switches:

Eraser uses the Office Removal Wizard (Offcln9.exe) program, which supports 
the following command line switches:

   Switch    Description         Example
   -------------------------------------------------------
         
   /a        Aggressive mode.    Offcln9.exe /a
   /L        Create Log file.    Offcln9.exe /Lofflog.txt
   /L!       Log only. Do not    Offcln9.exe /L!offlog.txt
             delete anything.
   /q        Quiet mode.         Offcln9.exe /q
   /r        Restart system.     Offcln9.exe /a /q /r
   /s        Safe mode.          Offcln9.exe /s

NOTE: These switches are not case sensitive. The switch /a and /A are both 
recognized.

To run the utility, click Run on the Start menu and type the following 
(this example assumes the Eraser2k.exe file is on the Windows desktop):

   c:\windows\desktop\Eraser2000.bat

This carries out the following command line:

   c:\windows\desktop\Offcln9.exe /a /L

A dialog box with the following text will appear:

   Microsoft Office Removal Wizard

   You may need to reinstall certain applications after using this
   option because some shared files and settings may be deleted.

   Do you want to continue with this option?

To continue running the utility, click Yes. If you click No, the utility 
does not remove any files.

To view a list of files and registry settings that the utility removes from 
your computer, open the Offcln9.log file. This file will be located in the 
folder where you run Offcln9.exe.

IV. Known Issues
----------------

Shared Files Are Removed:

This utility removes shared system files that Microsoft Office 2000 
installs. Because another program may use a shared file, other programs may 
not run correctly if a necessary shared file has been removed. If this 
problem occurs, reinstall the program to replace the required shared file.

Office Fonts Are Removed:

Because this utility removes fonts, including Times New Roman and Tahoma, 
text in some programs may not appear as expected. For example, Microsoft 
Internet Explorer 5.0 uses the Times New Roman font (Times.ttf) by default. 
Because this font is removed, if you run Internet Explorer 5.0 after 
running the Eraser utility (and before reinstalling Office), text on some 
Web pages may be difficult to read. Reinstalling Office corrects this 
problem.

Rich Edit Control Is Removed:

The following error message may appear when you start some programs, such 
as WordPad:

   Could not load the RichEdit control DLL.

To fix this problem, copy Riched20.dll from the Office CD-ROM Disk3 into 
your Windows\System folder. Also, reinstalling Office corrects this 
problem.

Error Running Office Maintenance Mode Setup:

The following error message appears when you try to run Office Setup from 
the Add/Remove dialog box of Control Panel:

   An error occurred while trying to remove Microsoft Office
   2000 Premium.

   Uninstallation has been cancelled.

This error occurs when you do not choose to Remove Office (in Office Setup) 
prior to running the Eraser utility. Microsoft recommends that you first 
use Office Setup to remove Office before running the utility. To install 
Office again, you must run the Setup program from your installation media, 
such as your CD-ROM. 

Additional query words: OFF2000 Eraser2000 cleaner erase eraser2k eraser 2000 erace

Keywords : kbfile kbsetup kbtool kbdta
Version : WINDOWS:2000
Platform : WINDOWS
Issue type : kbinfo