Just a thought, but could it be a broken Windows Installer?
I recently had trouble with a number of other programs trying to legitimately update (Skype and Java, specifically.) After much crawling through fora, looking for why these programs were failing to update correctly and not offering me useful information
about the failure, I discovered that a mid-August Security update broke Windows Installer. I removed the offending bit and have had no problems with installing things since.
Is it possible that this broken security update is also causing Office Starter's (badly-implemented) update to fail on installation as well?
(And yes, I too have seen the skeezy "Click To Run" pop-up on my machine. In fact, I came here trying to figure out if it was legit. I'm now convinced that it's not malicious, although it does look hastily put-together. That does not fill me with confidence,
given the other broken update. Thank you Suzanne, for doing the hard work!)