word 2003 rendered unusable - crashes on any graphic / picture

[SteveG]

I've had Word 2003 for months without any problem. All of a sudden,
whenever I opened a Word doc with any kind of a graphic in it, when I
scroll down to the graphic, Word gives me the error dialog "Microsoft
Office Word has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry
for the inconvenience." If I have a doc with no graphics in it, and
paste in a graphic, it immediately crashes. I'm running XP Pro w
Service Pack 2.

Here's the weird part. I have multiple user accounts in this machine.
When I open any offending doc from another account (thru network
places) it opens fine. When I open it on a different computer, it
opens fine. So it can't be Word the app because the same app works
fine on another user account.

I've done all the standard stuff. Deleted and reinstalled Word.
Deleted all the templates, including Normal, let it create a new
Normal, copied in a "pristine" Normal from a different user account or
Word on another computer ... Always the same result ... when I open a
doc with graphics, it crashes.

I'm pretty certain its a template corruption problem, but it seems to
respawn the problem every I get rid of the existing templates. I have
lots of docs with graphics. Until I get this fixed I can't open any of
them.

I've done lots of Google Groups searches but have not found anyone with
the same problem. Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

 

[Anne Troy]

Steve, sounds like a printer or graphics driver issue.
*******************
~Anne Troy

www.OfficeArticles.com
www.MyExpertsOnline.com

 

[SteveG]

Thanks Anne for the suggestion. I suspected that as well, and I did
recently get a new Dell 24" flat screen monitor and an ATI X800 XL AGP
video card (the problem did start after I got this new setup). But
I've upgraded the ATI drivers and all my print drivers to the latest
versions, and the problem remains. And if there was an incompatibility
between the ATI drivers and Word, I can't believe there would be no
record of it in the groups.

If it was either of these drivers, wouldn't it have the same effect on
Word docs in other user accounts? But it doesn't, even though they are
using the same Word app, same printers, same graphics card, same
monitor.

So it has to be something that is unique to this one user account,
which is why I'm suspecting normal.dot and other templates.

This is a real puzzler.

 

[Anne Troy]

Hi, Steve. I can only suggest you clean up the hard drive. Maybe there's
just some errant temp files causing problems:
http://www.officearticles.com/misc/how_to_clean_up_your_hard_drive.htm

Then run Word troubleshooting (perhaps skipping the normal.dot thing):
http://www.officearticles.com/word/steps_to_troubleshooting_microsoft_word.htm

*******************
~Anne Troy

www.OfficeArticles.com
www.MyExpertsOnline.com

 

[SteveG]

Thanks again Anne.

I've narrowed it down in that I've found the culprit. First I
restarted Windows in Safe Mode, and the graphics displayed fine. Then
I removed my ATI Catalyst graphics drivers, restarted, and the graphics
displayed fine. Then I reinstalled the drivers, and the doc crashed.
But it's still specific to one user account ... I go to another account
on the same PC, open the offending doc, and it displays fine.

As far as I can tell, all the settings on the ATI Control Panel (of
which there are a bunch) seem to be the same for the two user accounts.
I've set them both to factory defaults.

I will try your clean up suggestion. Maybe there is something rattling
around in my Temp files. Thanks again for your help. I really like
your web pages ... good, clear, useful information.

 

[Anne Troy]

Ah!! My first feedback, Steve. Thanks a bunch! I'll be putting forms up
there for suggested articles and fixing/updating any that someone may think
I've written badly or were incomplete. Thanks again!
*******************
~Anne Troy

www.OfficeArticles.com
www.MyExpertsOnline.com

 

[TF]

This would seem to be either temp files (see
http://www.gmayor.com/what_to_do_when_word_crashes.htm) or a corrupt user
profile.



: Thanks again Anne.
:
: I've narrowed it down in that I've found the culprit. First I
: restarted Windows in Safe Mode, and the graphics displayed fine. Then
: I removed my ATI Catalyst graphics drivers, restarted, and the graphics
: displayed fine. Then I reinstalled the drivers, and the doc crashed.
: But it's still specific to one user account ... I go to another account
: on the same PC, open the offending doc, and it displays fine.
:
: As far as I can tell, all the settings on the ATI Control Panel (of
: which there are a bunch) seem to be the same for the two user accounts.
: I've set them both to factory defaults.
:
: I will try your clean up suggestion. Maybe there is something rattling
: around in my Temp files. Thanks again for your help. I really like
: your web pages ... good, clear, useful information.
:

 

[SteveG]

I've done all the temp file cleaning out I can ... no effect.

I also renamed the Word registry entry, generated another, and got the
same problem.

Is the only remaining next step to move all my stuff to a new user
profile? I hate to do something so drastic. Could that really be the
cause of something so specific? The only problem I have is this darn
graphics not working in Word thing. Everything else works great.

I also have a trouble ticket going with ATI, so maybe they can find the
solution.

I will post the result if I ever get this resolved.

By the way, does anyone know how to cross-post this thread on
microsoft.public.word.drawing-graphics? Would I be violating any
discussion group etiquette by doing that?

 

[Anne Troy]

Steve, I can pretty much guarantee that anybody going in that group is
already in this group. Hang tight.
*******************
~Anne Troy

www.OfficeArticles.com
www.MyExpertsOnline.com

 

[SteveG]

Saw another post in this group about using "winword.exe /a" to start
Word without any templates or add-ins, and sure enough, when I use that
command from Run... to start Word the graphics display crash does not
happen.

Also, I tried deleting the whole Word 11.0 registry entry, and just the
Data subfolder of that entry, as suggested in some help pages. The
registries rebuild as they should when I next launch Word, but the
problem is still there.

There are no add-ins or templates in my Word START folder.

So ... I get the crash when I do a normal launch. I don't get it if I
do a "winword.exe /a" launch, and I don't get it if I do a normal
launch, but with my video card driver deleted. So it appears the
incompatibility is between my normal.dot template and my video driver.
Right? Anything else that could be involved? (it has to be unique to
one user account).

I've deleted normal.dot, renamed it, moved it out of the folder,
replaced it with the normal.dot from another user account (that doesn't
have the problem) and from another computer's copy of Word. I've shut
down winword.exe in the Windows Task Manager. As soon as I launch Word
and open a doc with a graphic in any of these circumstances, it crashes.

 

[SteveG]

Thanks for all the help on solving this. I opened a trouble ticket
with ATI as well, and they just suggested I uninstall the latest
version of their driver software ... Catalyst 5.6 ... and reinstall the
previous version ... Catalyst 5.5.

When I did this, the problem went away. So for anyone else who comes
up with this problem, the answer is to go back to Catalyst 5.5 and wait
for ATI to fix the incompability with Microsoft Word 2003 in a later
release.