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My daughter uses Word and at some point in the past tried to install a feature which needed the install CD. She no longer has the CD, figured she could live without the feature and cancelled the install.

However, every time she boots the computer it tries to resume the install and asks for the CD. All you have to do is hit cancel but it seems a bit annoying to me to have to do that each time you boot.

How can I get it to permanently abort the install?

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If all else fails method: If you can borrow a disk, you can use this to begin to satisfy the demand, but then cancel the installation. Pretty sure that will stop the message. Super User is not a legal resource, but I'm confident that this is legal. Willing to be told otherwise...

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I guess I'll accept this because after spending way too long trying every trick I could think of, and having the program rendered useless anyway by the installer cleanup I was able to track down a 5 year old install CD. She lives out of the country and time home was limited, so I just un-installed it, did a thorough deep clean and re-installed from scratch. I was hoping for something that I could help folks with by email because it isn't all that rare, but I'm not sure that kind of answer exists for this problem. – Dennis Feb 27 '10 at 12:52
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You could check if you can uninstall/change/repair Word (Office) from ControlPanel. Try change first and remove the feature.

Failing that, you can use RegEdit and look for HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce (and/or \Run) and if there is a Value there, look if it is running a Setup.exe and if so, delete it.

As always, be careful when using RegEdit.

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Though I had already tried this (and several other places in the registry) when I asked, I felt like this was promising and expected it to help. It didn't in my case but I would still probably start by at least looking for suspects in the registry. – Dennis Feb 27 '10 at 12:38
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This might not help but maybe try the Windows Installer Cleanup utility:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290301

When you are working on your computer and installing a new program, the installation suddenly fails. Now you are left with a partly installed program. You try to install the program again, but you are unsuccessful. Or, maybe you have problems trying to remove an old program because the installation files are corrupted.

Do not worry. Windows Installer CleanUp Utility might be able to help. You can use the utility to remove installation information for programs that were installed by using Windows Installer. Be aware that Windows Installer CleanUp Utility will not remove the actual program from your computer. However, it will remove the installation files so that you can start the installation, upgrade, or uninstall over.

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Based on everything documented, I really expected this to help. I had tried it and in this case it actually rendered the software non working. I have no idea why, and would be willing to accept user error, though it is a simple supposedly safe operation. Complications like this are reasons why after years of building, supporting, fixing and working with windows boxes I finally gave up all things MS for personal use 2 years ago. Linux has it's quirks but at least it's all free. This answer sure seems like it should be the solution, just not in this case. – Dennis Feb 27 '10 at 12:45
Hey sorry that it rendered the software useless. I remember trying this in the past and in my case it did work and didn't touch the actual software. Glad to hear you were able to find a disc. – Burton Feb 27 '10 at 18:30
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