Crossover Office DCOM95 prob when installing MS Office 2k

mike rodent · 03-29-2008, 03:38 PM

hi,

(first tried reasonable amount of searching on "crossover Dcom95" in forums and wiki - no joy)

Ubuntu 7.10, Crossover Standard 4.2, obtained May 05. Trying (once again) to see if I can get to grips with Linux.

Crossover itself installed fine. MS Office 2k listed as an app. All well and good.

Went to run MS Office's setup.exe. Crossover installed DCOM95 (whatever that is) and then nasty niggly dialog punctured my dreams: "DCOM95 incorrect command line options" or words to that effect: installation ceased.

But this is all running in a GUI type setup, even if I run the cxsetup file from Terminal. So I can't know what the command line might have been, let alone do anything about it.

Please help!
Mike

paulsm4 · 03-29-2008, 03:46 PM

Hi -

"DCOM95", just FYI, is the "Distributed COM" thingy Microsoft wanted to make the standard for network-aware programs in the 90's. Hah. It's long since obsolete; the current "Next Great Thing" is .Net.

But that's all ancient history (so, for that matter, is Office 2000...).

Anyway, the problem you describe is discussed here:
http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/trench/3048.html
and here:
http://linuxgazette.net/113/youngman.html

'Hope that helps .. pSM

mike rodent · 03-29-2008, 03:57 PM

wow, quick answer, thanks so much.

yes, I'm sure MS Office is dead or dying. May its death be slow, painful and above all expensive for MS.

Unfortunately I use (and have to use) an app, called Trados, a Computer-Assisted Translation tool, which as far as I am aware does not work with OpenOffice Writer, only with Word. There's an open source CAT tool, Omega T, which last time I looked, was v primitive & even worse than Trados, quite a feat.

I also use Dragon Naturally Speaking (dictation software)... unavailability of this has been the main reason for my not yet switching to Linux. Still doesn't work in Linux AFAIK.

Cheers,
Mike

mike rodent · 03-29-2008, 04:05 PM

ah

, right, so you maybe did a quick search on Crossover and Dcom95 without actually seeing what was being discussed: the novell site is about a Windows OS installation (!) and the linuxgazette site says the guy had no probs installing Office 2k...

anyone else got any more focussed answer to my prob?

Thanks!

paulsm4 · 03-29-2008, 04:52 PM

Ah - but look more carefully.

Both links discuss your *specific* problem, and suggest workarounds.

PS:
I wasn't saying that MS Office is dead (we should be so lucky!), but that your particular flavor (MS Office 2000) is two generations behind (MS2003 was largely compatible; MS2007 is just as largely *incompatible*)

mike rodent · 03-30-2008, 02:55 PM

Ok apologies firstly... there were indeed solutions here to the dcom95 problem

unfortunately neither worked. I located and deleted the dcom95 "installer .exe" in support/installers, and duly deleted it, as suggested in the first article - no joy

then I located and renamed all the dlls in the directory under dcom95 way down under .cxoffice, renaming all dlls found here .bak - no joy

in a case like this I would expect a google search on "crossover dcom95 command line syntax error" to come up with more hits... would've expected this to be a familiar problem. Seemingly not. Mystified.

paulsm4 · 03-31-2008, 04:59 PM

Sorry it's still not working. One other suggestion:

1. Uninstall everything (don't go to any great extremes, like under Windows. Just try to "delete" CX and get back to a "blank slate").

2. Download DCOM98 (not DCOM95) from Microsoft's web site:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...d-0867f9bdda66

3. Re-install CX

4. Before installing any of the MS-Office stuff, install DCOM98 (as an "unsupported application")

5. See if the MS-Office install works any better this time

Here's where I'm getting this suggestion:
http://www.bibleworks.com/forums/showthread.php?t=69

'Hope that helps .. pSM

mike rodent · 04-04-2008, 08:40 AM

thanks for the suggestion...

I did as you suggested and, on attempting to install DCOM98.exe I got the following message dialog:
"Error
A newer version of DCOM95 or DCOM98 had [sic] been installed. To override, you must uninstall the current version first"...

and it stopped.

There's a log file for the installation, which is quite long. The bit relating to the DCOM98.exe attempt appears to be this:

Code:

...
** Fri Apr  4 14:27:47 2008
Starting '/home/chris/cxoffice/bin/wineloader'
'winepath.exe' '--long' '/home/chris/Desktop/DCOM98.EXE'

Argument conversion:
  [/home/chris/Desktop/DCOM98.EXE] -> [Y:\Desktop\DCOM98.EXE]
Command:
/home/chris/cxoffice/bin/wineloader winewrapper.exe cxoffice Y:\Desktop\DCOM98.EXE

** Fri Apr  4 14:27:47 2008
Starting '/home/chris/cxoffice/bin/wineloader' 'winewrapper.exe' 'cxoffice'
'Y:\Desktop\DCOM98.EXE'

err:module:load_builtin_dll loaded .so for L"setupx.dll" but got L"setupapi.dll" instead - probably 16-bit dll
...

does any of this mean anything to you (or anyone)?

Thanks

paulsm4 · 04-05-2008, 09:19 PM

Sorry - sounds like it's about time to just give up on Crossover :-(

Don't give up on Linux. And, for that matter, don't forget that these particular apps you've got might not even run successfully on different versions of Windows (one or both might fail on Vista, for example).

You might want to consider dual-boot (do Linux stuff on Linux, and Windows stuff on Windows). If so, I'd recommend installing Windows *first*, then Linux.

You might also want to consider virtualization. For example, you can install and use a Linux VM under a Windows host, or run VMWare/Windows under a Linux host.