"That you say "they don't have the install key" suggests the installation was not legitimate." (how do I quote-block that)

About the installation key card, they just can not find the folder it is supposed to be in, I'm told. He thought it was at her desk and she thought it was at his desk, and when they looked in both piles of messy, it failed to present itself.

I am open to the suggestion that it could be a homemade attempted installation, but I don't know how to prove either hypothesis definitively, based on what I can see on that computer. If it's a bogus installation it looks like someone worked pretty hard on it. There's the IT guy who works there, he didn't try to rig up a bogus installation, but a couple other techies could have maybe.

Thank you for the clues so far.

EDIT:
Attempted "Repair" - "Error occurred ... may already have been uninstalled".
Next try obviously is to do the System Restore if I can find it.