Winword 2000 error - MS KB article incomplete

[Brad]

Today, I had a problem with a page fault in winword.exe module when I tried
to launch Winword 2000 (Win98SE). I found what seemed to be the dead-on KB
article,
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;305166&Product=wrd20.

It said normal.dot is corrupted -- which made some sense. The article said
to rename normal.dot, do some temp cleanup, and then relaunch Word. Well,
that did not work.

What did work was scanreg (which showed no problems), which I used to
switch to yesterday's registry copy. After that, word launched fine. And,
I was even able to go back to my normal.dot.

My analysis is that the corrupted file was not normal.dot but some other
doc that Word was trying to open when Word was launched. I suppose I could
have gone into the registry somewhere and deleted "recent files" or some
such and done the same fix.

Anyway, FYI to all here. And, if MS is listening, maybe they could add my
fix, or something along the same lines, to the KB. FWIW.

 

[Beth Melton]

Hi Brad,

A 'page fault in winword.exe' is a generic error message - it's
similar to a human headache. And just like a headache there are a
number of causes.

But unlike a headache there is no such thing as an aspirin for a
winword.exe error. Although some believe a corrupt Normal.dot is the
'aspirin to prescribe'. <grin>

Unfortunately there is no way to document every cause for encountering
the error. What is more important is *when* you encounter the error.
If you encounter the error upon starting Word, or any error for that
matter, there are some common causes and we have put together a
general troubleshooting FAQ which covers the majority of reasons. In
the future, should you encounter error starting Word then you may want
to take a look at this article first:
http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/AppErrors/ProbsOpeningWord.htm

Now I will say the KB article you found is *incredibly* lacking. It
looks like it was written by one who thinks a corrupt Normal.dot is
the 'cure-all'. <sigh>

FWIW the Word MVPs have addressed the same problem in many of the KB
articles regarding Word errors. We'll make sure this one is added to
the list.

--
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/

 

[Brad]

Thank you for the lengthy comments.

BTW, while it could have been a corrupt registry key as covered in the link
within the link you provided (thanks), my _hunch_ is still that it was a
corrupt non-template file that Word was trying to open -- maybe one that it
was trying to recover (though I did not see a bad termination before the
Word startup problem began). Again, just a hunch.

As an advanced, non-pro, I would suggest you consider adding to your list
of possible fixes a reversion to the prior-day's registry via scanreg.
FWIW. At least it worked for me.

BTW, I have had similar crash-on-startup problems with other Office aps --
Excel and PowerPoint. They have startup files (EXCEL.XLB and PPT.PCB) that
get too big and have to be deleted. I had looked for a similar Word file,
but apprently there isn't one -- or Normal.dot serves that purpose. The
ppt file grows fast and has to be deleted after maybe 100 starts; it took
almost 2 years before the Excel file grew too big. As I recall, there was
little or no coverage of this (when I last looked) in the KB.

Again, thanks.