Running Office Xp (pro)at work on Win XP (pro) machine. Problem started when an office application was clicked, and the installer would start appearing (instead of the application starting) and freeze the system. All office apps had been running perfectly before. Tried repairing on the add/remove programs...would freeze with a cyclic redundancy error (OSA.EXE or a number of .GIF bullet files could not be accessed). Reinstalling at the ad/remove programs produced same result. Uninstalled office. These unaccessable files remained on the system preventing reinstallation. Tried deleting the files - cyclic redundancy error. Tried deleting from DOS, same error. Made a dos boot disk and tried deleting from there with NTFSDOSPro - the files were located but any attempt to delete resulted in access denied messages. Went to Microsoft and told that I would have to pay for help. Finally tried a system restore and no joy there either. The only solution I can think of now is to partition and reformat the offending files off the disk...but this seems pretty drastic and loads of work, as no operations can be carried out on the files at all (copy, delete, move...even a right click for properties on them freezes the system for ten minutes). I'm reasonably adept with computers, but this one has me stumped.