[Answered] How to install/activate Office 2016 retail/msi

Hi, many thanks for the reply. I haven't modded or removed anything, my Windows installation still has everything it came with. Also I have rebooted quite a few times since the Office install and its updates.

It looks like the sppsvc service is simply timing out due to the intense load on the C:\Windows\servicing\Packages folder. I'm not sure what is there that it would need to see, the files appear mostly to be components of updates for Windows.

I wrote a script which restarts sppsvc if it fails to start (but not if it shuts down normally) and it seems to start ok after the second iteration. It works as a workaround but I'd really like to get at the root of the issue. Does anyone else see sppsvc looking at files in this folder (I used Windows own Resource Monitor - the "Disk" tab to see this)?

 

Hi, I tried the cleanup as you suggested (you might be right, it might be a Windows thing rather than an office one).
I restarted as well just in case but unfortunately the problem is still there.

 

I have reinstalled office several times now and also run the cleanup several times now. Also I think all of the windows quality updates behave like KB4284848 in rewriting the system32 folder and I have installed one since the issue began. I haven't made any changes in the past to my windows installation and sfc /scannow comes out clean.

I appreciate your help and you are thinking along the same lines as me, so hopefully we will get it resolved. However I was hoping to find someone with experience of this specific issue. My setup is fairly simple so I would be surprised if this is only affected me.