I have Windows XP Media Center Edition. Worksuite 2005 came pre-installed
(with Word 2002), and I also installed Office 2003 Student and Teacher (with
Word 2003). I'd like to keep both versions running.

Everything was fine--Word 2003 opened documents by default, but I could also
manually open Word 2002 without any problems.

Then I tried to open a really old Microsoft Works Word Processor file I have
by double clicking. Well I'm not sure what happened. I can't remember
everything about this point, because I was just trying to get going and not
paying a lot of attention. I inserted the Works CD at one point when
prompted.

In any event, now whenever I run Word 2002 I get that "Preparing to Install"
box for a few seconds, and Word 2002 becomes the default application for Word
files. If I then run 2003 (manually), it gives me the "Preparing to Install"
box and becomes the default application again. This didn't happen before
trying to open that old Works file.

Incidently, I probably shouldn't have inserted the CD when prompted, because
I later realized that Word 2003 can open the same really old Microsoft Works
Word Processor files, but for some reason it was Word 2002 that wanted to do
it.

What I'd like to do is get the file applications to stay put, and, if
possible, make 2003 take care of the really old files. If 2002 demands to do
them by default, I'm okay with that--as long as it doesn't make itself the
default program and create this mess again.

I already tried searching the knowledge base, and found what *should* have
been the answer. I'll paste it.

""Preparing to install..." message starting Word
If you have multiple versions of Word installed on your computer, when you
start Word 2002, the Windows Installer may run and display a message that it
is preparing to install.

Note For additional information about how to run multiple versions of
Microsoft Word, click the following article number to view the article in the
Microsoft Knowledge Base:
319956 The Answer Wizard and the Help Index tabs appear blank when you use
Help in an Office program"

When I clicked on the link, it didn't have a thing about setting up multiple
versions of Word or the "Preparing to Install" box problem.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.