Office 2003 update failed and low disk space

Problem

Whenever you try to run updates for Microsoft Office 2003 from Windows Update it says that they have failed. In addition you may be running out of disk space.

Cause

There is a known problem where Office 2003 will fail to update to Service Pack 3. This can also eat up space on the hard drive (especially with Automatic Updates on) as each time it fails, it duplicates the installer file which is over 100 MB.

Solution

1. Go to C:\WINDOWS\Installer.
2. Right click on a blank space and click View -> Details.
3. Click the Size tab to order them all by file size.
4. This will help locate a series of duplicate files all the same file size and over 100mb. You need to delete all but one of those files.
5. Uninstall and reinstall Microsoft Office 2003.