Office 2010 requires MSXML version 6.10.1129

Windows XP with Service Pack 3 is identified by Microsoft as suitable for installing Office 2010. However during the installation routine you may get the following message:

The installation of Microsoft Office 2010 requires that MSXML version 6.10.1129.0 be installed on your computer. Install this component and re-run setup.

You may then discover that your operating system has a newer version of MSXML6, like 6.20. You will be unable to uninstall MSXML6 version 6.20 and if you attempt to re-install version 6.10.1129 you will get the following message:

Installation of MSXML 6.0 Parser failed because a higher version already exists on the machine. To proceed, uninstall the higher version and then run MSXML 6.0 Parser Setup again.

The advice I found in several places was to contact Microsoft Technical Support, have them remote into your PC and fix this problem. It took me half a day to connect with them but you can fix it yourself in about fifteen minutes. Here’s what they did for me:

1. Download Windows Installer Cleanup Utility from Softpedia (http://www.softpedia.com/get/Security/Secure-cleaning/Windows-Installer-CleanUp-Utility.shtml) This is a free utility so there are lots of “download” buttons for other software. Be certain you get the WICU utility.
Install the utility and launch it. It will show a list of software installed on your PC. Scroll down the list until you see the item named MSXML 6.0 Parser version 6.20.xxx. (See the screen capture below where I have MSXML 6.0 Parser version 6.10.1129 highlighted. My 6.20 has been removed and 6.10 is now in its place.) You need to highlight 6.20.xxx and click the [Remove] button.



2. Download XML6 for Office 2010. (http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=6276) This is called “Microsoft Core XML Services (MSXML) 6.0 Service Pack 1. Since I’m running a 32 bit processor I downloaded the file named msxml6_x86.msi and double-clicked it to install it.

3. Restart the computer.

4. Install Office 2010.

Now I have MSXML6 version 6.10 and have not yet found the application needing version 6.20. If I find it I will post an update to this article.