Word 2003 freeze - opening multiple documents, extra instances of word open

[HDMW]

We use mostly Office 2000 on W2K in our organization, but we have a few PC's
running XP with Office 2003. The problem occurs only in Word 2003, not Word
2000.

When the user selects multiple documents, for instance on the desktop, and
then opens these by pressing 'enter', the documents open and at the same
time a number of extra instances of Word open without opening any document.
So you selected 4 documents and opened them at the same time, ending up with
7 instances of Word, where 3 are empty.

When you try to close the documents (top right close window button), Word
will freeze and after a moment report the application has stopped
responding. You then have to kill the tasks. Sometimes you can close the
documents but when you come to the 'empty' Word instances, you'll get a
message saying 'normal.dot' has been changed, although this has not been the
case. I've tried it with several, very simple documents, and it is
repeatable on all our installations of Office 2003.

I've done full updates of Office and Windows XP, all the latest patches and
service packs are installed.

Can anyone help? The affected PC's are all of the top level managers - we
underlings have to make do with Office 2000 - so it's kind of an urgent
problem

The fact it happens on all installations does seem to suggest this must be a
known problem.

Thanks!

HDMW

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Apparently the multiplication problem applies to newsgroup posts as well.

 

[HDMW]

Apparently the multiplication problem applies to newsgroup posts as well.

No, apparently Outlook Express remembered I tried to send out this message
through another free newsserver, which was unsuccesful. I then created a new
account on the Microsoft server, and all attempts got posted even though I
had deleted them from the outbox. Unless this reply gets multiplied as well,
then there's something wrong with my OE settings :-/

My apologies for the multiple posts. Any idea what the problem might be
regarding Word 2003?

HDMW

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Well, for a start, are you sure that these are separate instances of Word as
opposed to just separate windows? If you look in Task Manager, how many
instances do you see running?

 

[HDMW]

Hello Suzanne,

thanks for taking time for helping to solve this issue! When I open 3 Word
documents I get 2 blank Word "instances". I checked the task manager and
noticed 3 instances of Word.

Killing these separately showed me that the documents are separate windows
of one instance, and the blank "instances" are indeed separate instances of
Word.

I just installed Office 2003 on my workstation running Windows 2000 SP4.
Here I cannot repeat the issue so it is probably a combination of Windows XP
and Office 2003 that causes the problem.

HDMW

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Well, I guess that's a start--still a mystery, though. I can't offer any
explanation for the behavior in this particular situation. I do have one
very old application that is able to export reports to a variety of formats,
and if you choose "Application" (rather than "Document") for Word, it does
open a separate instance of Word (with a document in Word 2.0 format!), but
that seems to be an entirely different sort of situation.

 

[Bob Buckland ?:-\)]

Hi HDMW,

Do you have any add-ins that are working with Word 2003 on the Windows XP machine or any AutoStart/AutoRun macros in Word?

If you use Start=>Run
Winword.exe /R
on the machines showing this behavior do you get the same result
=========
Hello Suzanne,

thanks for taking time for helping to solve this issue! When I open 3 Word
documents I get 2 blank Word "instances". I checked the task manager and
noticed 3 instances of Word.

Killing these separately showed me that the documents are separate windows
of one instance, and the blank "instances" are indeed separate instances of
Word.

I just installed Office 2003 on my workstation running Windows 2000 SP4.
Here I cannot repeat the issue so it is probably a combination of Windows XP
and Office 2003 that causes the problem.

HDMW <<

--

Bob Buckland ?
MS Office System Products MVP

*Courtesy is not expensive and can pay big dividends*

 

[HDMW]

Hello Bob

thanks for trying to help!

There are no add-ins or macros working, it's a bare Office 2003
installation. I tried the command you showed me, but that didn't change
anything, unfortunately.

Any other ideas?

HDMW

Hi HDMW,

Do you have any add-ins that are working with Word 2003 on the Windows XP

machine or any AutoStart/AutoRun macros in Word?

 

[GeoffWik]

Hi guys,

Google searched for help on a similar problem and your posts came up.

Again word 2003 but running on Vista Home Premium. When trying to open
Word, a message dialogue opens saying normal.dot has changed, do i want to
load it? Click yes or no and the application opens 14 documents then stops
working and closes down.

Have tried replacing Normal.dot, renaming Normal.dot, 'repairing' the office
installation and reinstalling it. Still no change.

Virus checker has not detected anything and can find no reference to a virus
matching the symptoms.

Any ideas?

 

[HDMW]

Hello Geoff

seems from what I read on Google results that this bug has been seen before,
and is an old one too, but MS is either incapable of fixing it or thinks
it's not worth the effort.

If they're hoping we'll purchase Office 2007 instead they're mistaken.

HDMW

 

[GeoffWik]

Hi HDMW,

I agree that fixes for this are not top of the MS agenda. It being a home
instalation in my case, I have a work around in that I created a desktop
shortcut with the target of "C:\Program Files\Microsoft
Office\OFFICE11\WINWORD.EXE" /a" The /a at the end apparently stops loading
the global macros and add ins and allows me to use Word but double clicking a
document or email attachent causes the original fault.

Not perfect but means I don't have to shell out more hard-earned cash.

Hope you get some resolution

Geoff

 

[Terry Farrell]

If it works correctly when starting using the /a switch it proves that the
problem is not with Word but with a third party add-in, printer driver or a
normal.dot corruption. In Safe Mode, Word is started in its default fresh
install condition before the creation of normal.dot and any customisations
or third party add-ins have had the ability to affect Word.

You should be able as many documents as you want providing that you don't
overload your system resources or you exceed Word's parameter limits.

 

[HDMW]

Hello Terry

in my case, all docs were free of macros and the Office installation is
clean, no third party add ons

HDMW

 

[Terry Farrell]

But it works in Safe Mode?

Terry

Hello Terry

in my case, all docs were free of macros and the Office installation is
clean, no third party add ons

HDMW