Excel help files missing 1

[Jacc]

I downloaded som stupid heat exchanger freeware and played around with, I assume it was written in VB6.
After that, the text that came up when selecting a keyword in Excel VBA and pressing F1 looked different and there was an error message.
So I uninstalled the stupid heat exchanger software and voilá, pressing F1 in VBA now results in an empty help window.

Tried to fix it with an "office repair" run. No. Uninstalled office. Reinstalled office. No. Still no help.

What now? Do I need to reinstall Windows XP? Buy a new computer and move to a new city? Or is there a little something in the registry that needs to be surgically removed?
Help me please!

 

[Kwan]

I always first try to restore computer to earlier than you installed the software. Then move, change name, etc.

 

[jmw]

You might try inserting your Office CD and selecting add/remove and then look for the option to add the help files. These are not always automatically loaded, so far as I recall.
If they were loaded and have disappeared then reloading them might restore any registry errors.

Otherwise you might need to uninstall and re-install office. (first you could try just uninstalling and re-installing Excel). CC Cleaner is quite useful to detect registry errors.

System restore is a nice idea, and it sometimes works. The last time I had occasion to use it (following a problem with Norton... what else?) if found it wouldn't work except in safe mode and even then it wouldn't let me restore to any time earlier than a few days prior. Why? you guessed it, a bug. I had to send a error report to Microsoft and download a special patch to try and fix system restore. Sadly, once started on one of these adventures you discover it is never as simple as just fixing one single problem, you discover a sequence of inter-related problems. This last episode cost me four days of messing about.

If all that fails, then move city. I'd suggest going to Boston where MS has a significant presence and you might get some specialist help or arrested.

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[Jacc]

Fixed! Apparently it's common that the file hhctrl.ocx gets "unregistered". hh.exe may also get bent. Typically caused by some small program you downloaded. It's not intentional though.
When I tried to open one of the .CHM files that the help is made up of I got the error message "Cannot Open the File: mkMSITStore". Try google MSITStore.

You can fix it by tweaking something in the registry but I'm not comfortable with that.

Solution came in form of a beautiful little software called "MJ's Help Diagnostics". It can be downloaded at

http://helpware.net/downloads/#MJs.

It checks and fixes only the registry errors related to the help files and presents the results in nice report.

Hiiighly recommended!

The program that messed up my help files:

http://www.pcdistrict.com/shell-and-tube-heat-exchanger-design-prod3965.html

Some links where I found clues to the solution:

http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-11183-0.html?forumID=89&threadID=191474

http://www.robworley.com/index.php/2005/windows_blows

Thanks for the inputs, guys! Perhaps CC Cleaner could have fixed it as well.