it all started with an audio driver problem. then my taskbar was flickering between a gray 98 theme and a blue xp theme. now windows update wont install 5 updates for microsoft office.

i followed all these steps that the microsoft guy told me to do - LIS utility, repair office, run windows install cleanup, then reinstall office. did them all.

reinstalled office and went to run update, and now update won't even come to the page where it tells me what i need. it runs for 15 minutes and comes to an error page:

The website has encountered a problem and cannot display the page you are trying to view. Error number 0x8DDD0009.

someone suggested uninstalling windows installer 3.1 - what is that and what does it do and do i need it or does it help to uninstall that? i feel like such an amateur lately :-(

Some ideas in these links:

http://mygreenpaste.blogspot.com/200...ft-update.html
http://mygreenpaste.blogspot.com/200...for-error.html
http://mygreenpaste.blogspot.com/200...x8ddd0009.html