I had to do a Vista repair install and was quite impressed with the Windows.old folder and saving of my data.
Unfortunately it meant reinstalling my applications.

Since I have several simple apps I started off by copying back the contents of the Program Files to see what would work without reinstalling.

Most worked straight away as they had no registry entries and all I had to do was replace the shortcuts.

PKR was impressive though because as soon as I ran it, it detected that the install was 'broken' and ran a repair which fixed all the registry entries then it ran like clockwork.

I had read about Office Diag in 2007 (a replacement for Detect and Repair) so I thought I'd run that and see if it was as good as the PKR repair.
It ran suspiciously quickly (more like 15 seconds than the 15 mins suggested) then said nothing needed repairing.

This was untrue as all the Office apps now say "Not enough memory to start .." when I try to start them.

I'm working abroad for the next 2 months so don't have access to my install discs until I get back.

Am I stuck with using OpenOffice until then or is there another option?
Maybe a registry fix to point to the installations to bootstrap the Office Diag?