Hi macropod.

That's the funny thing, after the first time the message came up, I thought I'm better off to reboot the system only to find out that the boot sector of my HDD was damaged!
Luckily I could repair this but when I eventually was succesful booting the laptop I found it was running as per normal but there were no restore points in the system restore function!
My laptop is running as per normal, I've got all functionality, there is no load on the processor, it's not running hot, it's stable, etc. The only thing is that MS Office doesn't open any of it's programs: Excel, Word, Access, PowerPoint, OneNote, etc. Nothing opens.
It really leaves me flabbergasted. I've done all sorts of tests: HD tests, RAM tests, etc. All normal.
I scanned the whole system, 760000 files, and not one single bit of malware, viruses, etc.
It seems to be a common problem. I am using TotalCommander and when I try to open the file in TC then it throws up a message: "Error executing program! (29)". This is a problem addressed in the TC-forums but is not related to TC, hence why I'm posting it here.
All answers related to this problem tells us to open Excel, or Word, or whatever, and make some changes in the options of the program. My problem is that can't even open these programs.
Before I posted this message I spent hours and hours reading and searching for solutions but all to no avail. It seems a tough nut to crack.
Thanks for your help anyway.
Luc