Can I still make my Microsoft Office 2010 Starter work again after an Office trial I installed has expired?

Question

I have Microsoft Office 2010 Starter on my Windows 7 laptop when I bought it. At some point, I installed a trial version of Microsoft Publisher 2010. Now, neither Word Starter nor Excel Starter would even startup.

I've read in here (yeah, Yahoo! Answers, I know..) that, since the trial period expired, it also affected my Starter installation.

Is there any hope of salvaging my Office Starter?

I don't want to buy MS Office, even if it's just the Student edition. I would also prefer not to install OpenOffice (yet another office suite?!), since I already have Lotus Symphony installed (it's what we use at work, but I'm not satisfied at how it handles files created from MS Office, because the formatting changes, more often than not).

Answer 1

Do you have a pre-publisher trial backup ?,
Is your machine an OEM with a recovery partiton or recovery disks ?, these will return you to factory settings and all the software that came with it.
You can then reactivate 'office starter', update all software reinstall programs and copy your documents, etc back onto your computer.
Sorry I could not think of or find an easier way.

Answer 2

I realise this is years too late but for others (like me) who wish to reinstall their Windows box while keeping Office Starter (which isn't that bad really!):

For the English version of Office at least, you need to find and backup the file SetupConsumerC2ROLW.exe. Obviously, before you reinstall! On my computer, I found it in:

C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\OEMOffice14\OStarter\en-us\SetupConsumerC2ROLW.exe

This file has a sha1 Digital Signature so if you really needed to find it on the Internet, a non-signed file is certainly malware.

To install, you must right click the exe and select "Run As Administrator" while connected to the internet. It doesn't seem to do this itself. The install will then pull down 300MB or so. It won't tell you when it's done, you'll just see new items in the Start menu.

Warning: The first time you run Word/Excel you will get a prompt asking you if you wish to allow Office automatic updates. If you value your Windows Update settings, select to disable. The other two options will change Windows Update settings to Automatic and Tick the "Give me recommended updates...." box. Bleugh. The Microsoft Security Essentials installer does the same thing. I usually pull my network cable just in case.

You can always then change the "Click To Run Product Updates" setting manually in Word: (go to File/Help). Doing this doesn't mess with the Windows Update settings (cross fingers). The Click To Run updater doesn't install KB patches like the full Office 2010 does.