Word 2000 Running Slow

[Geoff Coxon]

I have Word 2000 SR1 + SP3 on Windows 2000 SP4. There is
plenty of disc space, I have defragged the disc,
uninstalled Office, run a Registry cleaner, reinstalled
Office, to no avail. I have also tried renaming
Normal.dot, and uninstalled / reinstalled my network
printers. The problem is that some docs take minutes to
open, while others are OK, and in all documents, going
into 'Page Setup' or pressing the down arrow on
the 'Fonts' box causes Word to hang for minutes, although
it does eventually respond correctly. Everything was
working normally until a about week ago, and the problem
was not connected to any activity such as installing new
S/W etc, as far as I know. It is also significant that
Excel is similarly afflicted. Any ideas greatly
appreciated, before I rebuild the PC!

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Have you cleared out temp files?

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Geoff Coxon]

Yes, I ran Disk Cleanup, which cleared out loads of old temp files,
but I still have the problem.

 

[Geoff Coxon]

I have now found that the problem only occurs when my PC is connected
to the company network. If I open a document with the PC off the
network, it opens straight away, and the Page Setup dialogue responds
immediately; connect it to the network, open the same document, and
Page Setup takes minutes to respond. However, I am not aware of any
resources which I am accessing on the network, apart from printers,
and I have already uninstalled and reinstalled the printers I use, and
removed all unused printers. Any ideas please?

 

[Mike Williams [MVP]]

I have now found that the problem only occurs when my PC is connected
to the company network. If I open a document with the PC off the
network, it opens straight away, and the Page Setup dialogue responds
immediately; connect it to the network, open the same document, and
Page Setup takes minutes to respond. However, I am not aware of any
resources which I am accessing on the network, apart from printers,
and I have already uninstalled and reinstalled the printers I use, and
removed all unused printers. Any ideas please?

Clutching at straws: do you have any old network paths listed in Network
Neighborhood? There are assorted problems with Office unnecessarily
iterating over these.


Mike Williams - Office MVP http://www.mvps.org/faq/
If something doesn't make sense, it could be worse e.g.
http://www.rathergood.com/moon_song/

Please respond in the same thread on this newsgroup - not by email!
Include details of your application and Windows versions, plus any
service pack updates. Answers may also be found by reading recent
posts, checking the FAQs or searching the relevant Google archive at.
http://groups.google.com/groups?group=microsoft.public

 

[Geoff Coxon]

I work in a large organisation, so Network Neighbourhood (My Network
Places) returns hundreds of items, most of which I have ever accessed.
I normally have three mappings to departmental shares, and I have
tried removing these, but this had no effect.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

The reason for this is often that the document is attached to a template
that has been moved or no longer exists. When you are not connected to the
network, Word doesn't waste much time looking for it; when it has the entire
network to search, however...

To solution is to disconnect from the network and attach a different
template (such as Normal.dot) to the document temporarily (Tools | Templates
and Add-ins), making sure that "Automatically update document styles" is not
checked. If the template still exists on the network, you can then
reconnect, find the template, and reattach it.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Geoff Coxon]

Suzanne,
Thanks for your help - I have now narrowed the problem down to being
related to my network printer; after deleting the printer, the problem
goes away, even when the PC is still connected to the network. I am
still not out of the woods, however. I have deleted the drivers,
reinstalled them from Canon's web site, and reinstalled the printer,
but still no joy. And no-one else in my office has a problem! I will
now start investigating it as a printer / Windows problem.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Make sure that the printer driver is installed locally. If you don't have
the printer installed locally, then Word won't work when you're *not*
connected to the network.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Geoff Coxon]

Suzanne,

The problem is resolved at last - and the answer was on Technet all
along, but I had not realised its significance. The fix was to delete
the network printer, and reinstall it on a new LOCAL port - now Word
and Excel work faster than they ever did! Full details on Technet at:-

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q280/8/21.ASP

Thanks for your time and assistance.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Umm, isn't that what I just said?

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://www.mvps.org/word
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.