Corrupt documents

[Jacob Jensen]

Hi,

tech stuff first Office XP, Win NT 4.0 SP6.

I have some users who are currently experiencing that when
they open a document the for-matting is completely off. A
document goes from 2 to 39 pages and contains almost
nothing but a lot of squares. It is almost impossible to
navigate to other than the pages 1,2 and the bottom page.

There hasn't been any change in the application nor the
templates. We have installed a Dom-ino.Doc client on all
machines - but not all users experience the problems.

I have no idea what to do - so all help will be
appreciated.

PS: How can I recover the messed up document? I have tried
adding a new template, and running it thru a docrepair
program with no success.

/Jacob

 

[Margaret Aldis]

Hi Jacob

This is almost certainly due to users having 'Recover text from any file'
selected in the File > Open dialog. Try opening again with 'Word documents'
selected.

If you do open a file in this format, don't save it back over the original.

 

[Jacob Jensen]

Hi Margaret,

I have checked and they do open as Word document (.doc). I
have ytried to recover the documents like descriped on
http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/AppErrors/CorruptDoc.htm
But with no luck. I have given all the "infected" users a
new clean Normal.dot and hope it will solve the problem.
But I'm very interested in finding out why this is
happening.

/Jacob

 

[Ole J. Tennvassaas]

We're also running Office XP (SP2 with all the latest
patches), but on W2000 SP4/Citrix MetaFrame XP.
The problem you describe sounds similar to ours, we have
users who complains that they from time to time gets
their Word-documents corrupted with rubbish, mostly
special characters and squares. The error seems to occur
when the user leaves the computer for a time.
Have now tried to run a "repair" of the installation to
see if that helps. Have been looking "all over" for a
patch/fix for this, so if anyone have solved this -
please reply!

 

[Beth Melton]

This could be caused by a variant of the Klez virus. Initially the
Klez only infected closed files but a variant, W32.ElKern.4926,
attempts to insert its code into all running processes. This can
result in files being reinfected after a full system scan has found no
viruses.

Here's an article from Symantec that contains a link to a removal
tool:
http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.elkern.4926.html

Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email can not be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/

 

[Jacob Jensen]

Hi Beth,

the virus you refer to cannot infect a machine running Win
NT - wich mine does - so that's not the problem - but what
is?

In my search for an answer I've discovered a number of
people is having af problem similar to mine, but they too
can't find an answer.

Please help....

/Jacob

 

[Ole J. T.]

As Jacob states, this is not a virus. I've even done a
full system scan with updated antivirus signatures (we
check for updates several times a day!).
In my opinion this is probably a bug in Word, maybe
caused by a conflict with other applications. Have NOT
encountered the error since i ran the "repair" utility in
the installer program last night - keeping my fingers
crossed! If the error appears again, i plan to contact
MS support.

 

[Jacob Jensen]

Hi

Ole if you find the answer - plaese post the fix as a
reply to this thread. I'll do the same, if I find a
solution.

encountered the error since i ran the "repair" utility in
the installer program last night - keeping my fingers
crossed!

My expirence is that there is no obvious pattern in when
and how the error occours. Some of my users can work for
about a month before the error appear - again!!!

/Jacob

 

[Beth Melton]

Hi Jacob,

Other possibility that have come up in the past is Symantec Anti-Virus
active scanning "real-time" protection and screen savers.

Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email can not be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/

 

[OleJT]

The error has disappeared (at least hasnt showed up for two weeks) after i "repaired" the installation (run office installer and choose the "repair" option), and installed the two latest Office patches KB822036 and KB824934. My headache now is that this introduced a NEW error: Our VB Macro that we used frequently isnt able to handle which document is "active.document" if we have more than one document open in the session anymore. If we try to save this information in an variable and set active.document this way, Word crashes! I'm getting sick of this! The macro worked fine before the patch was applied. I suspect this to be caused by KB822036, which patches a security hole in VB for applications.

 

[Jacob Jensen]

Hi Ole,

have you tried installing both servicepacks?

MS office XP SP 1 - Standard:
http://www.microsoft.com/office/ork/xp/journ/Oxpsp1.htm
MS office XP SP2 - Standard:
http://www.microsoft.com/office/ork/xp/journ/Oxpsp2a.htm

It might work. I haven't installet the patches yet, but
I'm working on it.

My users haven't had the problem for a while now. But it
apperers random. The first two users had a new Normal.dot
and the third had no changes made. Wierd!!!!

/Jacob

-----Original Message-----
The error has disappeared (at least hasnt showed up for

two weeks) after i "repaired" the installation (run office
installer and choose the "repair" option), and installed
the two latest Office patches KB822036 and KB824934. My
headache now is that this introduced a NEW error: Our VB
Macro that we used frequently isnt able to handle which
document is "active.document" if we have more than one
document open in the session anymore. If we try to save
this information in an variable and set active.document
this way, Word crashes! I'm getting sick of this! The
macro worked fine before the patch was applied. I suspect
this to be caused by KB822036, which patches a security
hole in VB for applications.