Immediately proceeding this error I had uninstalled a trial version of
MS Office 2003 (that was bundled but never used on this XP laptop)
because it was preventing me from installing my standalone version of
Powerpoint 2003 Immediately after this, the error started to pop up
in OL2000. When I open Outlook the operation failed button pops up and
I have to close out of the application.

I tried to run outlook.exe /safe but it can't find outlook.exe

Any help appreciated