Word 2000 hangs at startup

[Papa4]

I copied a bunch of Word and Excel docs from another PC

After I opened a few of these docs to see if they came across the network OK, Word began having problems.

Currently, the problem is that I cannot get WORD to open.
I get the first splash screen identifying Word 2000, and then my PC seems to hang. If I do a Ctrl-Alt-Del to see the running processes, I get a message saying that my system is "dangerously low on resources". After that, the only thing that will get my PC working again is to pull the power plug and reboot.

This has all the earmarks of a virus, but I have scanned my disk twice with the latest Norton anit virus and found nothing.

Asking around in the office, I discovered that two other PC's had the same problem after opening word files from the same user. The only thing that got these other PC's working was FDISK, FORMAT, and RE-INSTALL of Win98.

Had anyone had this problem and sloved it without having to reinstall Win98 ???

Paul
p-bungard@mindspring.com

 

[TSSTechie]

Hi

Try this. Go to Start -> Run and type : Winword.exe /safe

This will start Word in safe mode. You could also try deleting Normal.dot. I don't think deleting this will help but the sake of a 5 second try you might as well just in case.

Hope this helps

May The Force Be With You

 

[Papa4]

Your suggestion to get rid of the NORMAL.DOT file on my PC and replace it with a known good one did the trick. The infected NORMAL.DAT was 313 kb in size. I copied a NORMAL.DAT from another PC running Office97. This "clean" file is 42k in size, and seems to work just fine. When I can get a clean NORMAL.DOT from another system running Office2000, I will do so.

TIP: I remove ALL of Office2000 from my PC and reinstalled, but the problem was still there. Apparently the removal utility of Office2000 does not erase the NORMAL.DOT file located in the "C:\Windows\Application Date\Microsoft\Templates" directory. You must hunt down your NORMAL.DOT file using the "FIND" utility, and then erase the corrupted one. Then you can place the "clean" NORMAL.DOT in the same directory.

Thanks for your help. Now I have some other PC's to go clean up.

Paul

 

[TSSTechie]

Hi

Yopu shouldn't need to get a clean one. Just delete the old one and Word will sort out a new one for itself.

Glad that worked though

TSSTechie

May The Force Be With You

 

[Dreamboat]

Just some info for Papa4...

1. Normal.dot is never installed. It is created. When Word launches, whether first time or subsequent times, and does not find an existing normal.dot file, it creates a default one.

2. There's a program called Eraser97 for Office 97 and Eraser2000 for Office 2000. These programs are supposed to wipe the registry clean of the corresponding version of Office. However, they do not always work either.

3. You can find complete troubleshooting steps for Word at

http://www.theofficeexperts.com/word.htm,

and also a bunch of info about normal.dot.

Anne Troy
Way cool stuff:

http://www.cafeshops.com/OfficeExperts