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To disable the 'Software Protection' service of Windows 7, follow the below procedure: Click on Start type 'services.msc' in the search field and press enter. In the 'Services' window, look for the following entry: Software Protection Double click.

• Delete Office Software Protection Platform Service Crashed

Sometimes after uninstalling older versions of Microsoft Office some registry keys are left behind. This causes Spiceworks to think that those older versions of Office are still installed, even though the actual program files are all removed. You can follow the steps here to clean up those old registry keys so Spiceworks can get a proper inventory of the software on the machine.

NOTE: Please make a backup of Registry before making any changes to it. You can severely damage a machine if an incorrect edit is made.

4 Steps total

Step 1: Open up RegEdit

Open up RegEdit by going to Start>Run and typing 'regedit' and pressing Enter or OK. You can also enter the 'regedit' command into a Command Prompt to open up the editor.

Step 2: Locate the Office Registry Key

Microsoft stores all of the installation information for Office Products in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftOffice. Underneath this key you will see various version numbers, each corresponding to different versions of Office. They are as follows:

-9.0 is Office 2000
-10.0 is Office XP
-11.0 is Office 2003
-12.0 is Office 2007
-14.0 is Office 2010

Step 3: Locate the Corresponding Registration Key

Underneath each of the version number keys you should see a 'Registration' key. Depending on how many Office products you have installed (Visio, Project, etc. all will be stored underneath one of those version keys) on the machine there will be multiple hashed keys present underneath the Registration key. Each of these hashed keys should have a value underneath it called 'ProductName'. You can use this value to correctly determine which hashed key is related to the product you want to remove.

Step 4: Delete the Hashed Key

Once you have located the correct hashed registry key, delete it. As mentioned above, though, make sure you have a good backup before doing this!

Once you have performed the steps above run a scan on the device by either running a full network scan or a rescan underneath the Tools section of the device. Once the scan is complete you should see that the long deleted Office products are now gone from your Spiceworks Inventory. If the scan is still showing that the software is present, you might need to disable Incremental Scanning in Settings>Network Scan.

I hope this helps!

21 Comments

• Cayenne
  Marciab Nov 15, 2011 at 04:50pm

  Great How to.... Thanks for sharing

• Ghost Chili
  Kellanved Nov 15, 2011 at 04:55pm

  Thank you so much! Finally someone narrowed down which keys to delete! I could only recommend a general registry cleaner to others having this issue.

• Ghost Chili
  JustRob Nov 15, 2011 at 06:02pm

  Nice. Good to know exactly what to look for, when even the M$ 'fix it' doesn't get it all.

• Datil
  Brian Steingraber Nov 15, 2011 at 11:45pm

  Office 2010 is really bad about removing these keys so this is a all too common task for me!

• Habanero
  John6020 Nov 16, 2011 at 06:14am

  Brilliant - thanks for the information.

• Serrano
  tech_freak Dec 15, 2011 at 02:03pm

  Good One.

• Serrano
  pnadon Jan 24, 2012 at 05:06pm

  Thank you!!

• Mace
  hsc5775 Apr 20, 2012 at 04:03am

  great work
  thx for share

• Serrano
  Craig Manske Apr 24, 2012 at 07:54am

  On a 64bit machine it is under HKLMSOFTWAREWow6432NodeMicrosoftOffice.

• Datil
  Paolo0111 May 17, 2012 at 05:26am

  Thank you very much, James B!

• Datil
  spike7 Aug 27, 2012 at 10:49pm

  Nice.. thank you!

• Mace
  Gabrielle.L Sep 20, 2012 at 01:31pm

  Thank you for this! I've started doing Office upgrades on our workstation, and it was driving me crazy that my Spiceworks inventory showed multiple versions installed on a machine when there clearly was not.

• Jalapeno
  Dvir IT Nov 4, 2012 at 03:56pm

  It didn't do it for me a first. Until now...
  Solved!

  1. Disable Incremental Scanning in Settings>Network Scan. – Super Important!!!
  2. Use Microsoft fixit http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9669698
  3. Scan Device.
  Thanx a lot!
  Dvir

• Pure Capsaicin
  Justin.Davison Nov 14, 2012 at 05:04pm

  Nice one, just saw this and it is a good guide for a common issue people have.

• Datil
  Angus S-F Feb 28, 2013 at 04:38pm

  Nirsoft has a free tool to retrieve the Office keys from your domain: Produkey. It has a command-line option to '...enumerate all computers in the specified domain, and load the product key information from them.'

  Get it here:
  ProduKey - Recover lost product key (CD-Key) of Windows/MS-Office/SQL Server
  http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/product_cd_key_viewer.html

• prev
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Hi,

Each Method/step below progresses to the next if the first does not fix any corrupted files that are found, etc.

Have you read this Microsoft information about repairing corrupt system files and errors?

'Use the System File Checker tool to repair missing or corrupted system files'

_________________________________________________

And these eightforums.com Tutorials are very detailed for problems resulting from SFC Scan:

'How to Run 'SFC /SCANNOW' Command at Boot or in Windows 8 and 8.1'

Read this Section there in conjunction with the rest of the information they give in above link.

Note

If SFC could not fix something, then run the command again to see if it may be able to the next time. Sometimes it may take running the sfc /scannow command 3 times restarting the PC after each time to completely fix everything that it's able to.
If not, then run the Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth command to repair any component store corruption,

Repair-WindowsImage -Online -CheckHealth
Repair-WindowsImage -Online -ScanHealth
Repair-WindowsImage -Online -RestoreHealth

Restart the PC afterwards, and try the sfc /scannow command again.
If still not, then try using OPTION ONE above to run the sfc /scannow command at boot
If still not, then you could do a refresh of Windows 8, or run a System Restore using a restore point dated before the bad file occured to fix it. You may need to repeat doing a System Restore until you find a older restore point that may work.
If still not, then you can use the steps in the TIP box in the OPTION THREE section to manually replace the files that SFC could not fix.

__________________________________________________

'How to Refresh Windows 8 and Windows 8.1'

Refreshing your PC goes like this:

• The PC boots into Windows RE (Recovery Environment).
• Windows RE scans the hard drive for your data, settings, and apps, and puts them aside (on the same drive).
• Windows RE installs a fresh copy of Windows.
• Windows RE restores the data, settings, and apps it has set aside into the newly installed copy of Windows.
• The PC restarts into the newly installed copy of Windows.

_________________________________________________

Delete Office Software Protection Platform Service Crashed

'How to Reset Windows 8 and Windows 8.1'

'When you reset your PC, the drive will be completely reset, and all your apps and files will be removed from it. Windows 8 will be reinstalled, and you'll need to change any settings and reinstall any apps that you want to get back after resetting. If you know if any files that you don't want to lose, then you should back those files up before starting the reset'

Cheers.