Word crashes while saving document

[micky]

Hi,

My office XP installation has developed a recent problem. Word crashes
while saving any document as a *.doc file. It will save them as rtf or
txt without any problems. Uninstalling and reinstalling did not help. I
am running Office XP pro on Windows XP for tablet PC. It had been
working fine for over a year before developing this problem. Any ideas
on how to go about solving it.

Thanks,

-M

 

[Beth Melton]

Are you able to save as a *.doc if you start Word using the /a switch?
Go to Start/Run and run:

winword /a

Note the space before the forward slash.

Also, are you saving to removable media, such as a floppy?

Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email can not be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/

 

[Farh]

Are you able to save as a *.doc if you start Word using the /a switch?
Go to Start/Run and run:

winword /a

I tried that. It did not work. Exactly same result as before.

Note the space before the forward slash.

Also, are you saving to removable media, such as a floppy?

No, using the regular hard drive. There is gigs of free space. Also, I
tried "Detect and repair..." on the help menu and it did not help.

Thanks.

-Farhat

 

[mickey]

Are you able to save as a *.doc if you start Word using the /a switch?
Go to Start/Run and run:

winword /a

I tried that. It did not work. Exactly same result as before.

Note the space before the forward slash.

Also, are you saving to removable media, such as a floppy?

No, using the regular hard drive. There is gigs of free space. Also, I
tried "Detect and repair..." on the help menu and it did not help.

Thanks.

-M

 

[Beth Melton]

It could be a temp file creating the error. If Word runs into a rogue
temp file then many strange errors can occur and I've encountered Word
crashing during a Save since temp files are used during this process.

Delete all temp (*.tmp) files:
- Exit Word and Outlook if you are using it as your email editor and
reboot your computer if you recently experienced a crash
- Go to Start/Find/Files or Folders (or Start/Search then select Files
or Folders)
- Change "Look in" to reflect the drive/folder to the root of your
Local drive.
- In the Named text box, type *.tmp
- Click the "Find Now" command
- Delete the temp files you find.

*Note that these can be deleted directly from the Find Results.

To group the files for a single deletion:
- Click any file in the list
- Press <Ctrl A> to select all

Should you encounter a "File in use" error, press <Ctrl> and click the
file to deselect it.

As an additional note, the Owner file is another temporary files Word
creates. If you have been experiencing multiple crashes or if Word has
been hanging on you then it is best to search for Owner files
(~$*.do?) and delete those as well. These can cause "file in use" and
"read only" errors.

Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email can not be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/

 

[micky]

Hi Beth,

It could be a temp file creating the error. If Word runs into a rogue
temp file then many strange errors can occur and I've encountered Word
crashing during a Save since temp files are used during this process.

Delete all temp (*.tmp) files:
- Exit Word and Outlook if you are using it as your email editor and
reboot your computer if you recently experienced a crash
- Go to Start/Find/Files or Folders (or Start/Search then select Files
or Folders)
- Change "Look in" to reflect the drive/folder to the root of your
Local drive.
- In the Named text box, type *.tmp
- Click the "Find Now" command
- Delete the temp files you find.

*Note that these can be deleted directly from the Find Results.

To group the files for a single deletion:
- Click any file in the list
- Press <Ctrl A> to select all

Should you encounter a "File in use" error, press <Ctrl> and click the
file to deselect it.

As an additional note, the Owner file is another temporary files Word
creates. If you have been experiencing multiple crashes or if Word has
been hanging on you then it is best to search for Owner files
(~$*.do?) and delete those as well. These can cause "file in use" and
"read only" errors.

I did follow all of this but alas, no luck. Strangely, I found while
rebooting that if I boot into safe mode Word works as normal, no crashes
while saving or anything. Does that give any clue as to what might be wrong?

-M

 

[Beth Melton]

The fact the error doesn't occur when you start Windows in Safe Mode
does shed some light on the issue. Well...at least there is more
direction in tackling the problem now but I do need some additional
information.

- Do you happen to have a folder named "My Documents" as a subfolder
under "My Documents"?
- Where are you saving the documents? On your local drive? In the "My
Documents" or a subfolder in My Documents?
- What is the name of the folder?
- Do you have any network drives available?

Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email can not be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/

 

[mickey]

The fact the error doesn't occur when you start Windows in Safe Mode
does shed some light on the issue. Well...at least there is more
direction in tackling the problem now but I do need some additional
information.

Great.

- Do you happen to have a folder named "My Documents" as a subfolder
under "My Documents"?
No.

- Where are you saving the documents? On your local drive? In the "My
Documents" or a subfolder in My Documents?

On the local drive. In my Documents, though it happens regardless of
where I save them.

- What is the name of the folder?
- Do you have any network drives available?

Usually, though not always. Again, it happens irrespective of whether or
not they are available.

Thanks a lot,

-M

 

[Beth Melton]

I haven't forgot about you. I'm just not sure what to suggest
next... Do you have Office XP updated to SP-3? Take a look under
Help/About to find this information.

Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email can not be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/

 

[mickey]

I haven't forgot about you. I'm just not sure what to suggest
next... Do you have Office XP updated to SP-3? Take a look under
Help/About to find this information.

Well...a harrowing 24 hrs later I solved the problem. I decided to
rebuild the system from scratch and strangely, very strangely, the
problem persisted. Word still crashed while saving. Also, it still did
not crash in safe mode. After trying tons of stuff, I finally downloaded
filemon from sysinternals.com and tried to compare the difference in the
files touched or accessed while in safe mode and normal. Finally, I
homed into the fact that I could not prevent MCSHIELD.exe from running
in normal mode and that it did not run in safe mode. I could not kill it
in normal mode no matter what I did. Mcshield is the McAfee antivirus
software. So I uninstalled McAfee, and glory be to Clippy, everything
ran fine. Apparently, later research showed that McAfee was preventing
some dlls from being accessed or something like that. So finally, no
antivirus later, everything works.

Thanks for your help.

-Farhat

 

[Beth Melton]

I'm glad you were able to resolve the problem - I was starting to run
out of ideas! Thanks for the update.

Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email can not be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/

 

[JeffV64]

Mickey, just wanted to let you know that I had the same problem. Although I
rebuilt the system *before* finding your writeup, it was still helpful for me
to know that I wasn't going crazy.

Jeff