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#11
File system instability observed
Yes, it's quite possible that I didn't uninstall Office completely or correctly. I ran the setup / uninstall program, which ran successfully. However, most if not all of the MS Office files were still in the installation folder on my hard disk even after uninstalling with MS Office setup. My normal practice had been to delete lingering program files before re-installing a program. In this case I thought the remaining files would be automatically deleted or replaced correctly by the re-installation, so I didn't see a need to delete them manually.
I started reading the "Install updates" article you sent, and had the idea to re-install a Windows update pertaining to MS Office. Then I discovered that Windows Update no longer works. I restarted the Windows update and security center services - no luck there, it didn't help.
That led to my attempt to diagnose the file system itself. I found in the event viewer a recent entry in reference to severe corruption on my hard disk. I ran sfc / scannow, which reported at least a couple of corrupted system files; the others were replaced when I ran sfc / scannow. I have a good idea of how to replace the corrupt files once I find them, but I don't know which files they are. I ran chkdsk /F /R /X, which reported no bad sectors on my HD. Neither did Office diagnostics find anything wrong with the disk.
I can send an excerpt from the txt file I created from CBS.log. That's my best chance so far to fix the file corruption problem.