100% processor occupancy with Word and then crash

[hiltingbury]

I am using Word 2000 on Windows 2000 Pro (both up to date) and have been
writing my thesis in discrete chapters. I have created my own template
consistent with the university regulations.
When I combine a number of the chapters together (not a huge doc: say 150
pages and around 11 Mb inc pics) the processor load goes to near 100%. It
will blue-screen crash many minutes later. I don't normally watch the load
but I was keen to see what was going on. The Word process is taking up all of
the time.
I have regenerated Normal. I have saved the template as htm and reopened it
in Word and saved it again. I have done the same with each chapter before I
combined them. I can open it in Open Office but I haven't the time to learn
its tricks. I have recently almost got it stable in Word but as soon as I try
to edit anything off it goes again. As soon as I hold a mouse button down the
load drops to 2%. The same if I drop down a menu. Amazingly I can also print
it as the print process also drops the load to 2%. I have up to date virus
s/w etc.
I would be grateful for any suggestions on what to try next

 

[hiltingbury]

I should have added that the same thing also happens when I open the file on
my wife's laptop. Also Office 2000Pro and Win 2000, but both in rather older
versions

 

[hiltingbury]

Firstly many thanks for the reply.
In fact, I have tried both of those things and I definitely still have the
originals backed up in three places (my lifeline).
With OO, I saved an unstable combined chapter as an OO file. Closed and
reopened and then saved as a .doc. . When opened in Word it appeared stable
and I thought I had cracked it but as soon as I try to edit it, off it goes
again (really dispiriting). This effect makes it difficult to spot which
might be the culprit.
I should add that each chapter, on its own is perfectly stable.
Just to clarify the original effect, if I open an 'unstable' doc in word it
loads ok and it takes about 20 seconds before the processing load starts to
rise. Quite what starts it going is a mystery.
When it eventually crashes, which could be half an hour later (and which I
suspect may be caused by some other fault: my computer is rather long in the
tooth now) I get a blue screen "STOP- - - IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL" which I
thought was a memory conflict (although it is six months since I looked it
up). My wife did not want to let her computer get to that stage so I got
expelled!
As far as my methods, these chapters contain text, a lot of footnotes,
pictures which I embed in 2x1 tables (pic in top cell, caption in lower), ppt
diagrams also in tables, and excel charts (same again), section breaks with
changes to headers, and a TOC. I have EndNote 8 on my machine but have never
done "cite while you write", I just copy the formatted citations. I have
removed all add-ins (I think).
Sorry this is rather long but I thought it might just trigger a thought>
Again thanks for looking at my problem

 

[hiltingbury]

Thanks again. I will follow your suggestion but first I thought I should
remove a few of the variables and provide more data so I switched the Event
Viewer on, loaded the word doc that goes to 100% occupancy and wait for the
crash.Nothing happened! I then added the cricket commentary and set off my
backup to an external HDD to increase the stress. Got a host of controller
errors for the ext HDD (so I stopped it and unplugged it) but no crash.
Eventually , after 25 mins it tipped. Restarted and looked in the event
viewer. Nothing to be seen. So whilst I have found another problem I still
have the original one. I then opened the file that I had sent through OO and
out the other side and back again. That now seems stable! I have done some
editing on it (had to as a load of spurious Tabs have appeared as well as the
pictures going a bit awry). It still seems OK after at least an hour of
editing (while we won the cricket) . I thought that the external HDD was the
problem so I opened the previous version of the file (hadn't been OOd just
htm'd) and up shot the processor occupancy. So there still still seems to be
a problem in the file.
What I am going to do is to try my files on a University XP / Office 2002
computer. If they behave the same and both work then that will indicate a
memor
y leak as you suggest and I will cross post this problem. If one of them
generates a problem I will be back here with the puzzle. Does that sound
logical?
Thanks for taking the time to read all of this and for your advice on the
next step.

 

[hiltingbury]

Haven't done the test yet (everybody at Uni seems to be away) but the
document is still stable and I have been doing a lot of editing (and learning
about floating etc.)
Having gone through htm, OO and all the way back again I am left with some
peculiarities with my diagrams. As I said all diagrams are 2x2 tables, with
pictures, ppt slides or excel graphs inserted. Some of them now appear to be
surrounded by a frame (with handles). If I move them I seem to get control of
them as a table again. However they leave behind a blank space which the text
wont fill. Ticking Tools>Options>View, and switching on 'Text Boundaries' I
find these spaces are empty text 'frames'. Whatever I do I can't get rid of
them or even type in them.
Any ideas how I can get rid of these rogue frames and get the usual text
frames back to page size again (well not page size because I have a lot of
footnotes and headers/footers)
Thanks for any thoughts

 

[hiltingbury]

Just in case there are others out there who might have hit a similar problem
I thought I should post the "happy ending".

The Word 2000 rogue document opened fine on a machine using Office
Professional XP (on of course, Windows XP). I have since done a lot of
editing on that machine and the document has been though multiple saves. I
thought it would be interesting to put it back on my original system (Win
2000 and Office 2000).
It appears to be perfectly stable now and I am able to edit on there as
well. Problem gone away!

My hunch is that there was a corruption in the document which was not
cleared by the .htm process, but was cleared by opening, editing and saving
it in XP and transferring it back again.

Hope someone finds this experience useful.
Thanks for the suggestions and help