Word 2003 launches slowly

U

ubose1

I have been running Office 2003 Pro for some years on my computer
without any problem until this started happening to Word recently. On
starting Word, it brings up the splash screen and then the usual
screen of opening a new document but then hangs for 2 to 3 minutes,
which compares to the normal time of about 20 seconds for starting up
Word on my Pentium III 1000 MHz, 256 MB RAM Windows XP laptop. During
this time as it hangs, I see the hard drive is busy and the Microsoft
Outlook button pop up and go away in the taskbar a couple of times.
After that the Word program works as usual. In my troubleshooting
efforts, I did the following.

- Started Word using the command winword.exe /a, and Word started
normally without the above problems.
- I deleted the temp files as advised at
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/ProblemsStartingWord.htm#Word_opens_very_slowly.
However, a couple of files could not be deleted because they appear to
be related to ZoneAlarm ForceField. ZA is my firewall program.
- I deleted the normal.dot template.
- I deleted the Data key in the registry.
- In Word's Startup folder, there is only the PDFMaker.dot file. I did
not delete this, but turned off the PDF add-in tool in Word.

I still have the same slow start problem. Any help will be appreciated.
 
T

Terry Farrell

Go to the Startup folder and temporarily remove the PDFMaker.dot. Test
again.

If that doesn't do it, possibility you have a corrupt printer driver. Try
deleting and reinstalling the printer making sure that you have the latest
driver first.
 
U

ubose1

Neither of the two actions helped. I reinstalled Office 2003 and I
still have Word hanging for up to 5 minutes after launch.
 

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