I have the original CD for Office 2003. It worked OK in Windows 10 although it did ask for permission to modify whenever I started Word. My new mini computer does not have a way to hook up a drive so I bought an external drive. It runs and finds the DVD in File Explorer and lists all the files on the disc. But it will not self start.
Looking through the files I see several setup.exe files. Oddly enough there are folders labeled OWC 10 and OWC 11. Each of them has an .ini file and a setup.exe. I clicked one and it does go into the setup but it only runs for maybe 10 seconds and responds that it has updated the Office web files.
I tried a few fixes for the auto-run I found online but nothing so far.
You may have to manually enable autorun, or unhide and look at the autorun.inf file to see what it’s trying to launch and do that manually. It might be another setup.exe or .msi file somewhere on the disc. You may also have to run it in admin and/or compatibility mode. 2003 is pretty old and there’s no guarantee it will work well on modern systems…
Autorun got disabled on Windows for safety reasons. You could enable it and then disable it again, but it’s a hassle.
I would just find the file named autorun.inf on the top level of the CD, and then open it up in Notepad. Find the file name that is listed after “open”.
Opening that file will do the exact same thing as it would if autorun is enabled and run.
Edited to add:
I downloaded a copy, and it appears the file it runs is the main SETUP.EXE that is in the top level.
Woo Hoo! There was a hidden setup.exe file in the root directory. Installed perfectly and runs without any messages now. It even let me register online. I have been using Office 2003 for 23 years now. If anyone is monitoring the online registration they are probably going, WTF?