JSI Tip 10217. When you install Office XP on Windows 2000, you receive 'Installation ended prematurely'?

When you install Office XP on Windows 2000, you receive:

Installation ended prematurely because of an error.

If verbose logging is on, the log contains information similar to:

RegisterProductID: Unable to create HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Office\10.0\Registration\\{90280409-6000-11D3-8CFE-0050048383C9\}. Hence ProductID, PIDKEY, & DigitalProductID keys will not be Registered
Action ended 13:16:04: InstallExecute. Return value 3.

This behavior will occur if permissions on the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Office registry key are too restrictive. The default permissions are:

   Name                            Permissions
   Administrators                  Full Control
   Creator Owner                   Full Control
   Power Users                     Special
   System                          Full Control
   Users                           Read

To resolve this issue:

01. Start / Run / Regedt32.exe / OK.

02. Navigate to the following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Office

03. Press Permissions on the Security menu.

04. Clear the Allow Inheritable permissions from parent to propagate to this object box.

05. Select the System account and set it to Full Control in the Allow column.

06. Set the other default accounts permissions.

07. In the Permissions for Office dialog, press Advanced.

08. If you didn't set Full Control on an account, press View/Edit to insure that permissions are appropriate.

09. Check the Reset permissions on all child objects box.

10. Clear the Allow Inheritable permissions from parent to propagate to this object box.

11. Press OK.

12. Press Yes when prompted to enable propagation of inheritable permissions.

13. Press OK.

14. On the Registry menu, press Exit.

15. Install Office XP.