Office XP and Vista - SP3

[Benzmum]

Hi. I have asked a couple of questions about office before, I think mostly in
the Word discussion group, but I'm not getting any answers. Can someone help
me with this please?

I had some strange behaviour in Word after I downloaded updates to Word 2002
which I have installed on Vista. Consequently now that I'm getting notified
that I should update to SP3 I'm nervous about disrupting Word again. (I
actually uninstalled the previous updates and things returned to normal.)
What are my risks if I don't download SP3? Or does anyone know some specific
updates to Word 2002 that I really should have installed?

I'd be most grateful if someone familiar with this software could respond.

 

[DL]

Well Office pre 2003 is not fully compatible with Vista, there are known
bugs which will not be fixed.
If you were more specific on 'strange behaviour' someone may be able to
advise

 

[Benzmum]

Happily - thanks for acknowledging my question! When I chose the Find
command, the dialogue box opened in slow motion; the same thing happened when
I selected Save. Also, I got some "ghost" window frames appearing on the
screen at times when Word was open. Does that help? One other thing, though
it's trivial: the Office Help Assistant Gallery isn't available - there's the
paper clip only, and if I try to select the gallery I get "There is not
enough memory available to complete this operation."

I had installed Office 2002 before on Vista and then updated to SP3; this
behaviour occurred then too, so I assumed something was wrong with my
installation and uninstalled and re-installed the whole thing (minus SP3).

 

[DL]

The not enough memory err is likely down to a corrupt dll / instalation

Office Help assistant, it is installed? Modify the installation, under
tools, help assistant

What memory does this PC have?
What video card is used?

 

[Benzmum]

I have a Sony Vaio VGN-NR160E with 1014 Mb RAM with a Mobile Intel(R) 965
Express Chipset Family display adaptor - is that the video card?

 

[DL]

Yes, that's the video display.
I think I would be looking at fitting an extra memory module to bring it up
to 2gb
Vista is particularly memory hungry, the ghost windows and slow menu options
would tend to point to memory. You might try ensuring any background apps
are turned off. Sony tends to have a number of unnecessary background apps
running by default. Also if you are running Norton or McAfee AV these can be
resource hungry - try running with these disabled, when not connected to
internet, and if they are 30/90 day trials preinstalled, consider an AV
solution with a lighter footprint when the trial expires.

 

[Benzmum]

Gracious! I was living with 256 Mb on XP and thought 1 Gb sounded pretty darn
extensive. So do you think that if I got another Gb module I wouldn't have
these symptoms after I installed the office updates? I'd rather like to be
sure that's it before I invest in more memory. Also, I'd uninstalled the
Norton free trial that came with Vista and have been using AVG.

 

[DL]

I can only say that many others have said Vista would appear to be a better
experience with 2gb
Since you have an onboard video, that also uses sys memory.
Do check what background apps you have running, as I recall Sony often
supplies Sonic? & other media apps that are on by default. You might also
check with Task Manager, whilst running word, to see what the commit & cpu
utilisations are
PS OfficeXp is not wholly compatible with Vista so it may have its foibles