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Chet asked: “Windows ME computer. I recently had to reinstall Windows ME and it’s not letting me run the Office 2000 program. It keeps telling me that “This must be the original account that it was originally installed on.” If you have any suggestions, that would be great.”
Chet, Windows ME was probably even more reviled than Windows 8. It was even called “Windows Mistake Edition” by PC World, you must be just about the last holdouts still using it.
As to your question, Office 2000 was a special case for Office installations, with XP or 2003 you could get the key using software of ill repute, but Office 2000 never stored its key on the computer, it just wasn’t there to find or decode.
What frustrated Office 2000 installers had to do, if they misplaced the original key that came with the software, was to call Microsoft with their Product ID and Microsoft would give them the code to punch in.
In your case, it gets even more complicated than that, when you say that it needs to be installed in the account it was originally installed in, we think you may mean that it needs to be installed in the original Windows installation it came with. If that’s the case, you’d need to call whoever made your computer, and see if they’re willing and able to provide that information for a Windows ME era machine. Microsoft didn’t deal with OEM installations even back when Office 2000 came out, part of Microsoft’s OEM deal is “you get it for cheaper because we won’t give you any support.”
If you call whoever made your computer it’s very likely that they will say that they’ve discontinued support for your model, considering it’s slowly inching towards its 20th birthday. Windows ME stands for Millennium Edition and it came out in 2000, XP replaced it a year later.
If you call whoever made your computer it’s very likely that they will say that they’ve discontinued support for your model
So… fun fact: old editions of LibreOffice work with Windows ME and they’re free! Sorry, Chet, but that may be your best bet to get around this issue.
What’s even worse news here is that Microsoft has declared end of life on Windows ME on July 11, 2006, and Office 2000 on July 15, 2009. What that means is that Microsoft will not assist you with either product, not for any reason or at any price.
And finding that old edition of LibreOffice will be a challenge as well. One of the go-to websites for finding old versions to download, OldApps.com, has dropped it from their list. And LibreOffice on the official site only runs on systems back to Windows XP SP3 at the earliest.
You’re probably down to shopping eBay, Craigslist, and computer flea markets at this point.
For $200, you could get a Chromebook and use Google Docs, which works remarkably well. You could get a deal on a small Windows laptop for about the same price, but it wouldn’t come with anything more than a trial of Office 365, but you could then download the latest version of LibreOffice and run it for free.
It might be time to pull the plug…