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When I opened up my laptop this morning (8/16/14) there was a pop-up on the screen telling me there was an update available for Microsoft Word Starter 2010 and asking me if I wanted to download it. It did not look like the typical Windows or Office update notification. I closed the pop-up and opened Windows update and ran it. There were some updates available, but none that said they were for Word Starter. IS there a new Update for Word Starter or is this someone trying to get me to download a virus?
***Office Product moved to Office 2010 by the Moderator.***
A family of Microsoft word processing software products for creating web, email, and print documents.
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
Microsoft has posted a Knowledge Base article describing and explaining this popup and providing a solution. Find it at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/3016799.
Hi everyone,
We heard back from the product group. The dialog is expected for a legitimate Office 2010 starter update. It appears for click to run scenarios where the path is missing a piece of information between the build that the user is running on and the latest available build.
The august update that was pulled is a Windows update, not an Office update.
Thanks!
DK - MSFT support
I got the popup and read the posts and so finally clicked ok but now I have a 'protected' drive with no access and the popups are starting again and now have spread to other computers that don't have Office Starter. Whats going on??
Office 2010 Starter is click-to-run (which means that it makes use of application virtualization) and it creates a virtual drive called Q on your system; this is normal. See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/982434/en-us.
I got the popup and read the posts and so finally clicked ok but now I have a 'protected' drive with no access and the popups are starting again and now have spread to other computers that don't have Office Starter. Whats going on??
If CTR is the "only" distribution method for 2010 Starter why did I receive an update for it on 10 Dec through the usual Update Tool. This was KB2883019 which states it is for the Starter edition. Obviously, CTR is NOT the "normal" distribution method or it is the 1% exception.
CTR is the only way that 2010 Starter will run. CTR is the only way you can get it. As far as I PERSONALLY KNOW, patches distributed via Windows Update cannot (or "should not" to the best of my understanding) affect any CTR installation of Office.
My GUESS!, emphasis personal guess only, is that the KB article is slightly in error. It implies that the fix in the article affects Starter.
I suspect, only a guess again, that what the KB article author intended to convey was that fix had been applied to 2010 Starter via the MS update process for CTR versions ...
One issue that is specific to Starter is that it was intended as a "throw away" or "Bait and Switch" application. In the Official description of Starter, intended for Builders only (no longer accessible to general public) MS clearly stated that the intent of Starter was to show new consumers Office 2010 and induce them to BUY the full version. MS did not intend people to use it long term. I personally think that MS was very surprised at how many people used Starter as their only version. That is why they removed it from distribution.
Looking at the KB you cited, I don't know that it would apply. As I understand it, Starter does not use "MAK" type volume license keys for activation. Starter is activated using a OEM key.