Word freezes when opening

[Mark]

on an XP machine, Word has worked fine since we bought it, but suddenly
started freezing the computer when loading the splash page. Excel and
Powerpoint work fine. I have uninstalled Office, run virus scans and
reinstalled Office twice, but still Word continues to freeze. Any
suggestions on what to do?

 

[garfield-n-odie [MVP]]

See http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/ProbsOpeningWord.htm .

 

[Mark]

Thanks garfield-n-odie. word opened fine in the /a mode. I tried all the
fixes and still have the same problem. moved the normal.dot file to the
homepage, and renamed it normal.old, checked there that there are no files in
the STARTUP directories, removed an old print driver and installed the one
for my new printer, deleted the DATA folder in the register, etc. etc. Word
still freezes at the same place. i did notice that there is not a file
called normal.dot anywhere on the computer now, so don't know if that makes a
difference or not.

any other suggestions would be appreciated.
Mark

 

[garfield-n-odie [MVP]]

The fact that Word opens properly with the /a switch tells me that the
most likely problem is your Normal.dot template or an add-in in the Word
or Office startup folder.

Are you sure you found/moved the right Normal.dot file? In Windows XP,
your Normal.dot is usually in the "C:\Documents and
Settings\<username>\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates" folder. In
Windows Vista, your Normal.dot is usually in the
"C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates" folder.

What files do you have in the "C:\Documents and
Settings\<username>\Application Data\Microsoft\Word\Startup" folder?

What files do you have in the "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\<Office
version>\Startup" folder?