You do not ordinarily need the office disk when you run a Repair (see under Help|Detect & Repair). You can also run a 'repair' installation via 'Add/remove programs' in the Windows Control Panel.

BTW, your lack of an Office disk raises the question of whether you actually have a valid license for the copy you've been using.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

I met the people when they were losing their house. I was getting out of a bad situation myself and they helped me out, rather, we helped each other out. They had a business that failed and were trying to get rid off all the paperwork they had, disks, etc before the house was foreclosed. I remember it well, i walked into their office, which was a horrendous disaster, they picked the laptop up out of a pile of papers and said "here". I was never given a disk for the computer, just a power supply and the laptop itself. Any disks were thrown away or left in the house when it was foreclosed a week or so later. I didn't have any issues with it until now, especially not then, (We were living on their rural 600 acres with no electricity so I had no occasion to really use the laptop until much later anyway!) and I never thought to ask them for the disks. It was a traumatic time for everyone. So yes, I do indeed have a valid "license" unless I have to fill out some Microsoft paperwork for transfer of license or some such arcane thing. I don't steal, if that is what you were implying.

I wasn't suggesting you were stealing, or anything of the kind. However, whoever might have bought the disks via a post-foreclosure sale now owns the license, not you. Of course, if the disks ended up in the dump, I guess the license is probably your's - on the basis of possession of the product key.

Given your situation, I strongly recommend retrieving your product keys and keeping them in a safe place. Programs like MagicJellyBean KeyFinder (http://www.magicaljellybean.com/keyfinder/) can retrieve them for you.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Thank you for that link. I tried repairing from within MS Word and it gives and unknown error. I tried fixing it from Add/Remove and it says "A Fatal error occurred" about 1/3 way through the status bar. is there any way to retrieve exactly what error occurred?