Word 2002 on XP

[Beginner]

Hello I have been through this problem before and I think I am finally about
to understand it, but need your confirmation on a couple of points.

I have a home network setup with a 98SE PC attached to a printer and both
the PC and an XP laptop connected through a router.

Often when I am working in Word, it crashes with messages about sending
report to MS. It asks me if I want to save a new normal.dot file, etc.
Sometimes it directs me to an MS page about the HP printer driver. I have
updated the driver but the problem persists.

Suzzanne Barnhill told me some time ago that Word 2002 when it starts looks
for a printer.

What I think is happening is that if the PC is on stand-by, the laptop's
Word 2002 cannot communicate with the printer and problems start.

I think also, that maybe even if I haven't put the PC on standby, it WILL go
on standby after a while because it has been programmed to shut down the
disk after so many minutes. Is this correct? If you can't tell me I will
ask the 98SE people.

My main question here is: Is it possible to disable the feature whereby
Word 2002 looks for a printer? And is it is what are the disadvantages?
Probably it wouldn't be able to print any longer...

Any ideas on this will be much appreciated.

qim

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

If you are using a network printer, just make sure that the driver is
installed on the local machine; then Word will be able to find it even if a
network connection is not present. That means that you should have the
printer driver installed (locally) on the laptop as well as the desktop.