[SOLUTION] There was a problem setting up Microsoft Office Home & Student Edition 2010

Last week I worked on a computer where the user bought Microsoft Office Home & Student 2010 online and downloaded it from Digital River.  He downloaded (on Windows Vista SP2) and ran it, but it gave an error on Step 4 or 4:

There was a problem setting up Microsoft Office Home & Student 2010: There was a problem setting up Microsoft Office.  Try running Setup again.  If the problem continues, contact Microsoft Product Support.

In most forums online, it pointed to this Microsoft Support page, which wasn’t the problem for my user:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2445957

This does describe the problem perfectly, but it didn’t apply.

Many forums recommended a Clean Boot and uninstalling all Microsoft Office products, but I didn’t feel like this would help.

As I investigated more, I was curious as to what “Microsoft Office Click-to-Run” in the Programs and Features was.  I removed it and ran the installer again.  Now it came up with a different error:

This product must be installed to Q:. Ensure that Q: is unused and try again

Scratching my head, I noticed that the downloaded file (x16-32007.exe) was only a few megabytes, which I thought was very strange.  I searched for help and found this thread:

http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/officeinstall/thread/10c7fed0-d7eb-403c-b03c-6713d9e376e1

This actually was helpful.  NOTE: Most forum commentators blame this error on the Q: being mapped already.  This computer didn’t use Q:, but rather was an error, probably because I removed the Click-to-Run setup.

Here is the answer to the problem quoted from there (thanks Niyamath Khan):

Go to the site where you purchased Office 2010, and sign in with your LiveID. Then click on the “My Account” link at the top of the home page to access your Office downloads. Click on the Download button for the suite you purchased, and then click on the Advanced Options link below the “Download Now” button. There will be a version of Office 2010 listed that is not Click-to-Run and does not require an available Q: drive.

The user went back to digitalriver.com, logged in, and I was able to find the 32-bit full 550MB download.  I had some difficulty getting the huge file to open, but once I did, everything was perfect — no thanks to Digital River pushing my user this silly version.