'save autorecover' spontaneously resets to 10 minutes, why?

[Charles Harvey]

I use very large Word documents that take 10 to 30 seconds to save, and am in
the habit of manually saving every few minutes as I reach a suitable pause. I
often have several of these large documents open at once. On my versions of
Word 97, 2000 and 2002 I have tried either to disable 'autorecover', or set
it for a longer time interval, so that it does not do its 'save autorecover'
at inopportune moments. Word, however, often spontaneously resets this
feature to 10 minutes whatever I set it to! With several large documents open
this 'save autorecover' can stop the PC for half a minute or so every few
minutes, as the saves are out of phase; very annoying indeed. The spontaneous
resets do not always occur, but happen frequently enough to be very
frustrating.

I am quite happy manually to save as I am in completely in the habit of it,
and I do not want the annoyance of having to face a frozen screen every few
minutes, so how can I disable 'save autorecover' such that it stays disabled?

This phenomenon occurs on the three PCs I use. All run fully updated XP and
Word.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

You should be able to turn AutoRecover (which, BTW, is not an actual save)
entirely. If Word is not saving your settings, then it may be that your Word
Data key needs to be rebuilt. See
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/MissingMenusEtc.htm

 

[Charles Harvey]

Hi Suzanne

I was not able to turn autorecover off and have it stay turned off, but
after deleting the registry key as described in
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/MissingMenusEtc.htm, as you recommended,
it seems that now I can. It is too early to say whether or not this state of
affairs is permanent, but it is a very good start.

Many thanks for your help, and I'll come back to the forum if the problem
recurs.

Charles Harvey

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Hope that works for you! I'm curious about a document that takes so long to
save, though. I've had some pretty heavy-duty ones, and they still save more
or less instantly.

 

[Charles Harvey]

Hi Suzanne

The mystery deepens! Deleting the registry key not only cures the
'autorecover spontananeous reset' problem, but also cures the 'word has
encountered a problem and needs to close' problem when I save a document.
Naturally I was very happy indeed with this situation as it completely
transformed working with Word, until I found, on the second reboot of the PC,
that Word had become recorrupted, and I was almost back to square one!

It is very easy to delete this registry key prior to each Word session,
however, so I am fairly happy with this system as a workaround, but it would
be good permanently to cure the problem.

I have not been able to discover what triggers the recorruption, as it does
not happen at every reboot, and it has not yet happened on closing down Word
and restarting it. I have used no other software during these experiments,
although of course there is all the usual stuff running in the background. I
will try disabling the antivirus software, Bullguard, and see if this helps
(I don't use the web on the PC on which I do most word processing).

If you have any suggestions for further investigation, they would be greatly
appreciated.

Incidentally the heavy weight files are between 100 and 150 Mb as they
contain large numbers of embedded maps, in quite high resolution so that they
can be up to an MB each. I need to embed them rather than link to them, as
the files are used on several different computers.

Regards

Charles Harvey

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

My guess is that a corrupted normal.dot is re-corrupting the registry
entries. Have you tried renaming normal.dot? I didn't see it mentioned in
the chain of messages mentioned below.

 

[Charles Harvey]

Thanks for the tip, but unfortunately it did not work. Word makes a new
normal.dot that gives the same problem.

The essence of the situation is: I run Word 2000 on my laptop (Centrino 1.6)
and on a desktop (AMD dual core). The problem with 'autorecover spontaneously
resets to 10 minutes' occurred on both PCs until I deleted the Word Data
registry key as recommended by Suzanne. On the laptop this deletion sems to
have solved the problem completely asit has not reappeared after many reboots
and openings of Word overf several days. It has also solved the 'word has
encountered a problem and needs to shut down' message when saving file to
hard disk.

On the desktop, however, the deletion cures these two problems until the PC
is shut down, but they reappear when it is restarted even into diagnostic
startup mode.

I simply don't know what to try next, and any advice will be gratefully
received!

Charles Harvey

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

One final grasp...

In Word, check Tools - Templates and Add-ins, and see if you have any global
templates or add-ins loaded. If you do, note their names & locations. Also,
choose Tools - Options - File Locations, and note the location of your
Startup folder.

Close Word--Outlook, too, if it's running. Right-click a blank area in the
taskbar and choose Task Manager. Click the Processes tab, and see if
winword.exe is listed under Image Name. If it is, click it, then click End
Process.

Next, delete the Data key *and* rename/delete Normal.dot. If you had any
other global templates or add-ins in Word, find them also, and move them to
a different location (especially any that might be in Word's Startup
folder). If the latter turn out to be the problem, we can deal with
restoring any lost functionality.

Next, do a search of your hard drive for all files named Normal.dot (you
might have more than one), you should tell Windows Explorer to include
hidden and system files in the search. If you find any, note the date/time
the file(s) were last modified. If any were modified about the last time you
closed Word, rename or delete them.

Next, reboot, start Word, and see if the problem returns.

 

[Charles Harvey]

Hi Herb

Success!

I followed your detailed instructions and Word is now functioning as it
should, with both of the problems not reappearing after several reboots.

I thought I had done something very similar after your first post, but the
sequence must have been different.

Many thanks

Charles Harvey