Reinstalling Office 2007 (Home and Student) on Windows 7

This has been a nightmare and I have tried so many tips form other online forums without success. I
I recently upgraded from Vista to Windows 7 Professional and had no trouble initially when I installed Office 2007. The one issue I did have was that a configuration menu would come up each time I opened a Windows document, but then it would go away. Very annoying but looking back, no more annoying than not being able to install & use the program. I uninstalled Office and now I am unable to reinstall it. The disk starts to run, I enter the product key, click continue, then Install Now, and it says that it is installing. The CD stops running after about 30 seconds and then and the menu just says that "MS Office 2007 Home and School has encountered an error during setup." No codes or numbers. All I can do is close the installer window.
I have closed my antivirus and firewall programs as well as everything else, tried installing is Safe Mode, tried running as the admin, deleted all Office references in the registry, all without any success. Window updates have been installed over the last week, but the latest update to Microsoft.net will no install and has failed several times.
Like I said at the beginning, I have tried many suggestions, but some of the ones that refer to registry keys don't apply to me. I am running on a 32-bit system. Thanks in advance for any help!