I had a copy of MS Office that came with an old computer. I installed it on my wife's new computer. At least I'm pretty sure I did.

It's no longer there. There is, however, an entry on her Start menu that says "Microsoft Word", but it does nothing, and the icon is a generic icon.

Is this Microsoft Genuine Advantage removing software? Has anybody else tried this?

Microsoft Genuine Advantage does not remove software.

I've seen programs disappear when a hard drive is failing/developing bad sectors, the registry is badly corrupted or someone uninstalled something they shouldn't have.

Here's another weird scenario. I have a client who was having trouble with AOL, so he uninstalled/reinstalled it and all the MS Office shortcuts pointed to AOL. Click on Word, Excel, Outlook, etc. and AOL would start. Word, Excel, Powerpoint documents, etc. were suddenly associated with AOL - try to open a Word doc and AOL would try to open it. Very weird. Uninstall AOL and everything went back to normal. Reinstall AOL and this behavior returned.

I never figured out why this happened, nor did I find a fix for it. I just created new Office shortcuts and reassociated .doc, .xls, .pps, etc. with their appropriate programs. Just mentioning this to get your mind thinking.....do you know if any software was installed recently or was showing unusual behavior? Maybe try running a system restore along with virus, adware, spyware, trojan scans.

Sounds like maybe you have an Office software activation issue....

If it was an OEM copy of Office that came with the old computer, you can't technically re-install it on a new machine without reactivating it for the hardware in the new machine. MS OEM software really isn't supposed to be reactivated (though you might be able to call Microsoft and convince them to do it by telling them you had to replace a blown motherboard/processor in your computer due to a power surge -- if you try, I'd definitely embellish about how hard it was to fit that new motherboard into that "freakin' crazy designed Dell/HP/Compaq/Gateway (or whatever you have) case"! ).

However, like getting them to reactivate an OEM Windows install, it is hit or miss as to whether they will actually do it.

I'm wondering if I am mis-remembering. Perhaps I installed it on her old computer, and the only reason those entries show up in the start menu is because I copied all of her personal files to the new computer.

I installed Office on her new computer now. She can run it 50 times before it forces you to register/activate/whatever, so we'll leave it like that. I don't think she uses it that often.