winword.exe process randomly disappears

[bhogan101]

Hi friends,

Yep ... this is very difficult to debug.

As the subject states users at a client site will be happily working away
running certain macros without fail and then randomly the winword.exe process
will terminate, no errors, no warnings ... no nothing ... just gone.

I've tried to make the word installation as "vanilla" as possible by
performing the following:

Replaced normal.dot
Applied every service release & hotfix to Office 2003
Removed all external templates & addins (except mine)
Ran a "Detect & Repair"

The VBA code is sound ... It runs perfectly OK at 3000 other client sites.

I have been able to replicate the problem once. I repeated the same action
approximately 1,000 times after the crash in an effort to repeat the
behaviour but without success.

Can anyone give me some ideas/tips on how to start debug this.

Thanks in advance.

Ben.

 

[Terry Farrell]

One known bug is that Word closes when you click on the Task Bar icon to
switch to another open document. This is due to a known bug with the
handwriting Recognition part of Office 2003. If you run Office Setup, choose
Change, Advanced Options and look for handwriting Recognition under
Alternative Inputs. Select 'Not available on my computer' and click OK. Set
up will remove it.

Test Word again and if it is OK, it is safe to reverse the procedure if you
need to use Handwriting Recognition.

 

[bhogan101]

Thankyou very much Terry.

After i posted i checked the other posts in this group and found the
references to the KB article about the known problem with handwriting
recognition. I have taken the steps to remove it from clients machines and
will re-post if this doesn't resolve the issue. Thanks for your help.

 

[bhogan101]

Hi all,

The problem still exists. the client has just called stating that removing
the "handwriting recognition" module has not resolved the issue. Any
ideas/tips on what i could try next?

Thanks.

 

[Terry Farrell]

Get the user to start in safe mode and work for a while to see if that
temporarily stops the problem. This will help point to the problem area.
From Start, Run type in

winword /a

and press enter. In safe mode, Word starts in its default install mode
bypassing all templates and add-ins, etc. This will determine if it is a
Word problem or a third party add-in problem. It is usually the latter.

Terry