Excel 2007 stalls & "configures" itself *every* time I run it

Hi! I'm an old guy disabled by chronic illnesses that make it difficult for me to sit up at my PC for more than a few minutes at a time. I'm trying to scrape by on Social Security, so all my hardware and software are hand-me-downs.

Over a year ago my cousin (who sadly is no longer with us) gave me a refurbished PC with Windows 7 and Office 2007 already installed.

(To this day I've not been able to figure out how to get this PC to network with my old laptop running XP, but that's another problem.)

The Office 2007 had an annoying issue, so every time I tried to run Word 2007 or Excel 2007, it would go into a time consuming routine like this:


1. First I would see:

Microsoft Office Excel [X]
-----------------------------

stdole32.tlb
---
[OK]

I would click the [X] the in the upper right corner of the error warning box


2. Then an hourglass would appear with this message:

"Please Wait while Setup Prepares"


3. Then this:

Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007
--------------------------------------

Configuration Progress

--------------------------------------

Horizontal grey bar that just sits there empty

labeled "Configuring Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007..."
After about 3 minutes minutes of waiting I lose patience and ...

I click the [X]j

"Are you sure"

Yes

Long wait

Windows Installer
================
Preparing to Install

Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007

?....

Finally, a blank work window appears.

But I still have to respond to this:

---------------------------
Setup
---------------------------
Are you sure you want to cancel setup?
---------------------------
Yes No
---------------------------

"Yes"

Excel is open!

I found a registry fix for Word 2007 that fixed the problem on Word.

But all the fixes I've tried for Excel 2007 have not helped.

I suffer from a circulation disorder that makes it next to impossible for me to remain sitting upright at my computer for more than just a few minutes due to pain that gets worse the longer I sit up, and which severely impairs my cognitive function due to reduced blood flow to my brain. So I'm having one heck of a time trying to stay focused on solving this problem long enough to make any progress toward a solution.

I'd be grateful to any patient soul who would be willing to work with me to try to figure out a series of troubleshooting steps that I could follow.

Hi "Will in Seattle",
That used to happen to me when I had more than 2 versions of MS_Office installed on my computer.
I ended up having to delete one of the versions and the problem was fixed.

As said below, Keeping Multiple version of Ms-Office is the real root cause for this issue.

I am having 2003/2007/2010 and facing this issue when I switch to open another version

Interesting. I have Office 2003, 2007 and 2010 installed, excel never gives a problem (this will of course, jinx it now), but word tries to config every time I open it (2007 only) Running Win 8.1