Word Crashes during use

[MON]

I have been having a consistent problem with Word on XP. When I am typing in
a Word document, almost every minute and sometimes with greater frequency,
the cursor freezes. Here's what happens.

1. the cursor freezes
2. an hourglass appears
3. the screen turns white/blank
4. I do an "end task" and it shows that all Word documents and Outlook
emails in progress are "not responding"
5. I then have to end task these items and lose my changes

Can anyone please help! Here is what I have tried so far:

1. renaming the normal.dot Word template and restarting Word
2. located temp files and deleted them (files that follow the pattern ~$*.do?)
3. running detect and repair from help menu
4. dumping the Windows registry key.

One other question: If I uninstall and reinstall Word, will I lose my Word
documents and Outlook emails?

 

[garfield-n-odie]

Close Word, select a different default printer in Start | Control
Panel | Printers, start Word, and see if the problem persists.