WORD 2000 garbage pasted overwrite

[Leo]

WORD 2000 garbage overwrites
22 Oct 2003

This problem has been on-going for 18 months. 18 months
ago Microsoft support offered file recovery - not a
solution for this problem, even when backups are done
every minute! There has been no response from Microsoft
to the latest (6 Oct 2003) request for technical support.

There may or may not be a link to AutoText. Buying a new
computer and re-installing everything from scratch did
not solve the problem!

Why should 128 bytes be copied (at an apparently random
time) from Normal.dot (from 0200h) and pasted (an
overwrite) on to say page 2, followed by another 128
bytes from somewhere, when the operator is working on a
much later page in a document of 10-15 pages ?

Many thanks

Leo
(e-mail address removed)


What happens every day:
1. AutoText is inserted (say, name and address) and
some typing done.
2. Previously inserted AutoText may be copied and
pasted.
Then, from time to time text in the document is
overwritten by 256 bytes copied from address 0200h of the
current document. Confirmed for 4 documents by myself.
The first 128 bytes are visible in Normal.dot. The paste
is always to a "round" address, 0800h or 1000h etc. It's
always the same 128 bytes in each document - the 256 byte
block always begins with EC A5 C1 00 5B ..

AND another bug
1. From time to time AutoText is displayed on the
screen and appears corrupted. Copying NORMAL.DOT to
another computer shows AutoText OK.

NOTES
1. OS is WINDOWS 2000 network (1000 computers) with
SP3
2. OFFICE 2000 SP3 has been applied
3. Long documents (up to 10 pages) are typed
in "Normal view" using NORMAL paragraph style.
4. Headers and Footers text is always in the
standard style
5. Frequent AutoText insertions are made - at least
1 per page.

Solutions tried
1. Delete key:
HKey_Current_User/Software/Microsoft/Office/9.0/Word/Data
2. Rebuild Normal.dot
3. Replace computer with a new P4
4. Rebuild computer (ie. delete all software,
including OS, and re-install)
5. Make Compatibility option "WORD 2000"
6. When pasting text from another app use "Paste
Special, Unformatted text"
7. Check for odd-ball font issues - none found.
8. AutoText has been frequently deleted and entered
again
9. Setting Auto-recover for one minute has not been
much use.

 

[TF]

Leo

This is complete gobbledygook. Would you like to start at the beginning and
explain your problem clearly.

There is little clear in your statement. If the user is working on a 15 page
document, what has normal.dot got to do with this and what page 2 in
normal.dot?

Is this a standalone computer> What OS? Are both the OS and Word 2000
patched up to date? What else is running on the computer - such as Anti
Virus? Where is normal.dot located?

--
Terry Farrell - Word MVP
http://www.mvps.org/word/

WORD 2000 garbage overwrites
22 Oct 2003

This problem has been on-going for 18 months. 18 months
ago Microsoft support offered file recovery - not a
solution for this problem, even when backups are done
every minute! There has been no response from Microsoft
to the latest (6 Oct 2003) request for technical support.

There may or may not be a link to AutoText. Buying a new
computer and re-installing everything from scratch did
not solve the problem!

Why should 128 bytes be copied (at an apparently random
time) from Normal.dot (from 0200h) and pasted (an
overwrite) on to say page 2, followed by another 128
bytes from somewhere, when the operator is working on a
much later page in a document of 10-15 pages ?

Many thanks

Leo
(e-mail address removed)


What happens every day:
1. AutoText is inserted (say, name and address) and
some typing done.
2. Previously inserted AutoText may be copied and
pasted.
Then, from time to time text in the document is
overwritten by 256 bytes copied from address 0200h of the
current document. Confirmed for 4 documents by myself.
The first 128 bytes are visible in Normal.dot. The paste
is always to a "round" address, 0800h or 1000h etc. It's
always the same 128 bytes in each document - the 256 byte
block always begins with EC A5 C1 00 5B ..

AND another bug
1. From time to time AutoText is displayed on the
screen and appears corrupted. Copying NORMAL.DOT to
another computer shows AutoText OK.

NOTES
1. OS is WINDOWS 2000 network (1000 computers) with
SP3
2. OFFICE 2000 SP3 has been applied
3. Long documents (up to 10 pages) are typed
in "Normal view" using NORMAL paragraph style.
4. Headers and Footers text is always in the
standard style
5. Frequent AutoText insertions are made - at least
1 per page.

Solutions tried
1. Delete key:
HKey_Current_User/Software/Microsoft/Office/9.0/Word/Data
2. Rebuild Normal.dot
3. Replace computer with a new P4
4. Rebuild computer (ie. delete all software,
including OS, and re-install)
5. Make Compatibility option "WORD 2000"
6. When pasting text from another app use "Paste
Special, Unformatted text"
7. Check for odd-ball font issues - none found.
8. AutoText has been frequently deleted and entered
again
9. Setting Auto-recover for one minute has not been
much use.

 

[Leo]

NOTES
1. OS is WINDOWS 2000 network (1000 computers) with
SP3
2. OFFICE 2000 SP3 has been applied
3. Long documents (up to 10 pages) are typed
in "Normal view" using NORMAL paragraph style.
4. Headers and Footers text is always in the
standard style
5. Frequent AutoText insertions are made - at least
1 per page.

Solutions tried
1. Delete key:
HKey_Current_User/Software/Microsoft/Office/9.0/Word/Data
2. Rebuild Normal.dot
3. Replace computer with a new P4
4. Rebuild computer (ie. delete all software,
including OS, and re-install)
5. Make Compatibility option "WORD 2000"
6. When pasting text from another app use "Paste
Special, Unformatted text"
7. Check for odd-ball font issues - none found.
8. AutoText has been frequently deleted and entered
again
9. Setting Auto-recover for one minute has not been
much use.


Observed/done this for several documents across 4 users:
User has a document in which exactly 256 bytes of garbage
has overwritten text on a page while the operator was
working on a subsequent page.
Q. Where have the 256 bytes come from ?
A. Open the docuemnt in a hex editor. The 256 bytes of
garbage matches 256 bytes found before the text in the
document file. 128 of these bytes are also in the users
Normal.dot.

The typists have set Auto-recover every 1 minute to try
and work around this problem - doesn't help much because
the Auto-recover file can contain the garbage.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Sounds like a virus to me.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
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