Word Freezes on opening

[Trajan]

Machine is daughters Gateway laptop, when problem 1st occurred was running
Vista Home Premium.
I installed Office 03 when new 2 years ago, all programs ran fine. About 6
months ago daughter said Word stalled on opening, all other Office progs
still work. Removed, re-installed Office 03, no luck.
Deleted 03 and installed Office 2000, problems remains. I get a general box
with the outline of a paper, but no menus or commands. Program stalls at
that point.
Am now running WIN 7 Ultimate, no change when clicking on Word.
Thanks,
Bill W

 

[Susan Ramlet]

Try to delete any files called "normal.dot" on your system and restart Word.
That's the default template that contains a lot of the configuration for how
Word launches, and even removing the programs may not have cleaned out these
artifacts.

 

[Bill Wolcott]

Hi Susan,
I just tried that, found 4 files and deleted them, restarted but still no
luck.
Any other thoughts?
Thanks,
Bill Wolcott

 

[Peter Foldes]

Bill

What 4 files ?. There is only one normal.dot

 

[Karen Sargent]

Machine is daughters Gateway laptop, when problem 1st occurred was running
Vista Home Premium.
I installed Office 03 when new 2 years ago, all programs ran fine. About 6
months ago daughter said Word stalled on opening, all other Office progs
still work. Removed, re-installed Office 03, no luck.
Deleted 03 and installed Office 2000, problems remains. I get a general box
with the outline of a paper, but no menus or commands. Program stalls at
that point.
Am now running WIN 7 Ultimate, no change when clicking on Word.
Thanks,
Bill W

.

 

[Karen Sargent]

Machine is daughters Gateway laptop, when problem 1st occurred was running
Vista Home Premium.
I installed Office 03 when new 2 years ago, all programs ran fine. About 6
months ago daughter said Word stalled on opening, all other Office progs
still work. Removed, re-installed Office 03, no luck.
Deleted 03 and installed Office 2000, problems remains. I get a general box
with the outline of a paper, but no menus or commands. Program stalls at
that point.
Am now running WIN 7 Ultimate, no change when clicking on Word.
Thanks,
Bill W

.
I am having the same problems. Please let me know if you have figured out how to solve the problem.

 

[Trajan]

Hi Peter,
Normal11.dot, Normal.dotm, ~$Normal.dot, and Normal.dot
Since you said there should only be one, I restored the others and
restarted, still no good.
Word begins to load, then stops responding.
Thanks,
Bill Wolcott

 

[Trajan]

Hi Karen,
No luck yet.
Thanks,
Bill Wolcott

 

[Susan Ramlet]

Can you launch Word in Safe Mode?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/827706

If so, then there is likely a corrupt add-in, template or document that is
trying to startup with Word in normal mode. Remove those (normal.dot is a
common suspect, which is why that was the first suggestion) and try to
re-launch Word.

 

[Trajan]

Hi Susan,
Thanks. That article refers to 03 and 07, I have 2000 installed now. I found
safe mode instructions for it and am able to start and run Word that way.
Any suggestions as to what other add-ins, templates to look for, since
normal.dot didn't solve it?
Bill Wolcott

 

[Susan Ramlet]

That's a hopeful start. It sounds as if there might be a corrupt template
starting up. or an add-in such as a new toolbar.

If closing Word, renaming or deleting all copies of normal.dot and
relaunching Word didn't work--though I think I might try that one more
time--you'll need to disable each add-in/template if you want to find the
culprit.

You could either disable them all, then turn them on one at a time (my
choice) or disable them one at a time and try restarting Word.

More info here:
http://word.mvps.org/Faqs/Customization/CheckIfAddinsInstalled.htm
http://word.mvps.org/Faqs/Customization/WhatTemplatesStore.htm

(These articles may have information for multiple versions of Word, but it
sounds as if you can work through that all right.)

I hope that's helpful.

 

[Bill Wolcott]

Thanks, Susan I'll give it a try and report back.
Bill Wolcott