MS Office 2013 : Main executables renamed with a bak extension

bertie40

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Leeds, UK
Hiya.
I encountered this, this morning. Customer running office home and biz couldn't run the apps, the machine saying the "shortcuts" had changed.

Upon investigation, the main apps (outlook.exe, winword.exe etc) were renamed outlook.exe.bak etc

A trawl around google indicated I wasn't alone with this.

Simply renaming the exe's didn't work (nah, that would be too easy [emoji2]).

Opinion initially blamed a duff MS update, but other reports dismissed this.

Maybe something to do with a subscription thing ?

Again, opinion has it that the only resolution is to remove and reload office.

Incidentally the repair routines didn't work, and the system restore routine failed.

Worryingly, opinion (again), has it that the problem can return.

Oh joy.

Anybody else seen this ?
 
I'd be curious to see the sector contents of a renamed exe and known working one of the same version. Perhaps another strain of cryptolocker or some other bug?
 
Was this O365 or an actual installation. For O365 I do know that the apps will run in "reduced functionality" mode once your sub has expired. But I am sure that at some point it is reduced to zero.
 
Was this O365 or an actual installation. For O365 I do know that the apps will run in "reduced functionality" mode once your sub has expired. But I am sure that at some point it is reduced to zero.


Nope.
It was a laptop copy of office Home & Business 2013, which came with the machine.

The product code was bought separately.

You just opened up the preinstalled copy of office, and selected "register".
 
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