I need to fix Vista's internal shortcuts to Office programmes

[Britstache]

When launching any Office product in Vista, I get the dreaded 'Please wait
while windows configures....' message and routine. I haven't solved the
problem, but I know what it is so perhaps a Microsoft Support Bod could
suggest a fix;

Somewhere Vista has set up a path to the .exe files for Office's
Outlook/Excel/Word/Powerpoint. This 'shortcut' has it's own logo in default
and recommended file menus (you'll see the icon labled 'Microsoft XXXx
2007'). Similar shortcuts have been added to the Start Menu. The problem is
that the shortcut is pointing to the wrong place, but it's impossible to see
where because 'location' propoerties have been disabled so all you will ever
see is the programme logo and/or name, not the file itself. UAC is not an
issue as you're frozen out of amending filepaths and shortcuts even as an
administrator!!

Because of this, when you start a programme Windows knows that the programme
has been installed (it's in the registry) but the shortcut doesn't get it
there so it looks for it, finds where it actually exists, then 'instals' it
for you in order to run the programme and this is what it's doing when it
runs the intaller window. This is made worse because Outlook's email
protocols, and all related file extensions are set to use the same shortcut
path (so launching a .docx, .xlsx etc file directly or sending/receiving
emails in Outlook will cause the same issue).

To solve this for launching programms, you can replace the Start Menu
shortcuts with your own, pointing to the correct file path, but this is a
temporary fix as I've found that updates will often re-set the Start Menu to
the offending shortcuts again!!

So the question is: how do we get Vista to set up the correct shortcut to
the .exe files in the C:\......\Office12 folder permanently?