I got home to a Windows problem. Every time my other half tried to print something from a app she uses for college on her HP laptop, it would throw up an Office Error. Somehow Office had taken over the entire printing process.
She tried to launch Office 365, it would complain there was an error. It said to Repair Office in Programs and Features.
I eventually found Programs and Features (you have to switch to Desktop mode, then open File Explorer, then click Open Control Panel and then hit the little arrow beside the Control Panel in the location bar and View all Control Panel Items)
I selected Office 365 in the list and the options were Uninstall and Change. There was no Repair option. So I decided to try Change. Nothing happened. I tried Uninstall. Nothing happened.
I rebooted the laptop and tried again. Nothing. I tried this three more times.
I ran all updates and tried again. Still nothing.
I ran a malware check. It found 8 cookies. And disabled them.
The Microsoft support site said to reinstall Office so I went to the Office site and downloaded the installer. Initially I tried Run but nothing happened so I specifically downloaded the installer exe and tried by double-clicking it. Nothing happened.
I ran the services.msc command which opened the console displaying all of the services. I found the Microsoft Office Service and it was stopped. I tried to start it. Error. Tried again. Error.
We managed to get the printouts we needed by running the app we needed to generate the report, taking a screenshot, putting the image files on a USB stick and then printing them out on a Macbook.
How is this acceptable?
How would a normal person be able to fix this?
Now obviously there is something wrong here but really it’s maddening how everything gels together in the Windows world. Is it any wonder that the IT service industry is in such a mess. Everything has to be a super managed service because otherwise nothing works. When Nortel moved to Windows, we had to triple the size of the IT team to cope. It was a disaster in every way.
I didn’t like Windows 8 before but I fucking hate the bastard now.