One solution for Word 2007 crashes

[George T]

This is a report of a solution I stumbled onto regarding mystery crashes by
Word 2007. Crashes happened on new docs, old docs, when many docs were open,
when one was. Happened in spurts or not at all for hours. (specs: Office
2007, Windows XP, new Dell Optiplex, Novell Netware network--all with latest
Service packs & updates)

Out of 20 users with identical new Machines with Office 2007, one group of 3
suffered these frequent random crashes in Word. I did the diagnostic gamut:
templates, add-ins etc. Drove me nuts for months. Had to roll back one user
to Word 2003. Seven have installed Open Office on the theory that they can't
trust MS (or me).

Reinstallation and service pack installs bought 1-2 days of respite then
problem re-emerged.

Only commonality of the problem group is that (a) they work on a lot of the
same docs and (b) 2 of them spew numerous temporary word files that never
seem to close (they also did this in Word 2003 before the upgrade--I have no
idea how they do this except that they keep many files open, are impatient
and are quick to reboot when it is not necessary and don't reboot when they
should).

On suggestion of a wise colleague I went to Word Options, Advanced, Service
Options, and turned off everything and anything that referred to shared
workspace.

ZERO CRASHES SINCE!!! Do not know why. Don't care.

 

[Terry Farrell]

George

That's an interesting discovery. Were your installations set to the 'Ask
Before' options? I wonder if this has to do with an incompatibility with
Netware?

 

[George T]

I don't recall any installation settings choices being presented regarding
"ask before updating."
The installation was pretty plain vanilla from a single disk using our
volume licenses. The only departures from the default were:
1) Setting the default save folder to the users personal network folder
(mapped as P 2) Setting the doc default save type to .doc instead of .docx.

The users in question all have read/write rights in each other's personal
folders and in the work files area (though the mapping is not identical).

I don't know enough about all the associated MS-Word pointers and temp files
to know where and how those get placed or whether not having access to any of
them was the problem. But if a file is closed by one user and them opened by
a second who has the right to access that file, why would there be a problem?
Is there some separate record-change file out there that somebody needs to
get to?

Note that the lockups persisted even though files were closed, new ones
started and Word restarted (or even after reboot) as if there was some
express need to finish writing to some file that could not be disposed of.
And there was no asking, no error message, no info in the event log. Just
the hourglass and the big red "X" over and over.

 

[Terry Farrell]

Thanks.

Terry

I don't recall any installation settings choices being presented
regarding
"ask before updating."
The installation was pretty plain vanilla from a single disk using our
volume licenses. The only departures from the default were:
1) Setting the default save folder to the users personal network folder
(mapped as P 2) Setting the doc default save type to .doc instead of
.docx.

The users in question all have read/write rights in each other's personal
folders and in the work files area (though the mapping is not identical).

I don't know enough about all the associated MS-Word pointers and temp
files
to know where and how those get placed or whether not having access to any
of
them was the problem. But if a file is closed by one user and them opened
by
a second who has the right to access that file, why would there be a
problem?
Is there some separate record-change file out there that somebody needs to
get to?

Note that the lockups persisted even though files were closed, new ones
started and Word restarted (or even after reboot) as if there was some
express need to finish writing to some file that could not be disposed of.
And there was no asking, no error message, no info in the event log. Just
the hourglass and the big red "X" over and over.

 

[rick m]

Terry:

On the Netware forums there has been discussion of this, usually
around CIFS and the way it's implemented. It's also come up that it
could be the way users have drives shared. I spent a couple of days
with a Novell engineer on this and he was stumped.

It's happening to me too but only for local network users - those who
connect in from other offices don't have this problem. I'm going to
try George's suggestion out this week to see if it works for us.