Word has stopped working.....

[Cecil Britton]

I just read a couple of other posts along the same lines as mine. I am using
Office 2003 on a Vista Ultimate platform. I had the same setup on a
different hardware platform and had no problems whatsoever. I have isolated
most of my Office problems to Word where I have seen the following:
1. If I simply try to open a .doc file it seems to take forever (probably 10
to 15 seconds).
2. If I click on Print Preview everything seems to stop for a couple of
minutes or more until I finally get an error message saying something like
"printer has not responded do you want to wait?" I click on No and wait for
a couple of minutes but the message does not go away so I click on its exit
button. That causes the box to fade and finally close; then the document
preview finally shows up. Now if I click on File\Print I get a print
dialogue box with nothing showing in the Printer Selection box. I click on
the scroll arrow in the box and I get a list of available printers, now if I
select my printer from the list everything hangs up and evnetually I get the
old "Word has stopped working, wait or force a stop" message.

3. I tried to print a message in Outlook and it operates differently. When
I click on Print nothing happens so I open the Printer applet in Control
Panel to see what is happening. I find the document being spooled so I wait.
After 2 or 3 minutes of spooling the printer starts and prints the document.
In Excel everything works perfectly when I attempt to print a spreadsheet.
I didn't try to print from Power Point or Access.

My printer is a HP J6140 that is networked via Ethernet cable. The printer
works with all my other computers and I can run all its configuration
routines and print test pages. It also ran with Vista Ultimate on a
different platform from the one I am now using. I have uninstalled and
reinstalled it on the problem computer and it had no effect on the problem.

Thinking I had a problem with Word I tried deleting a couple of its registry
keys to see if those were the problem and they were not. I also replaced
normal.dot, no help. I then checked for startup addons and none are present.
I also checked for com addons and there are none.

I finally gave up and uninstalled Office via Control Panel. Then I ran a
registry cleaner to collect any trash and I ran a cleanup utility to get rid
of system trash as well. I reinstalled Office and I am right back where I
started.

I got a couple of surprises with the uninstall, first during uninstall I got
a message that the Office Process was running and should be shut down. I
checked all my running processes and as I expected, the referenced process
was not present and running so I ignored the message and proceeded with
uninstall. The second surprise was that the uninstall did not remove my
Outlook profiles and settings. This may just be my lack of knowledge because
I have never had to uninstall Office before.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

AIUI, your printer is on a network. Do you have the driver for the printer
installed locally and set as the Windows default?

 

[C. Britton]

Suzanne, thanks for your reply.

Yes the printer is on a network and yes it appeared that the drivers were
all installed, and it was set as the default printer.

I use the word "appeared" because the printer worked okay in some tests but
just didn't want to cooperate with Word at all and only in a limited fashion
with Excel and Outlook. This morning I downloaded a copy of Open Office and
attempted to print a document from its word processor and got the same result
I had with Word. That pretty much told me that the problem was with the
printer drivers somewhere. I removed all my HP software, downloaded the
current software package for the printer and tried to reinstall everything.
The first time I did this the installation failed and the failure created a
file that went to HP support. Being hardheaded I decided to try one more
time to install the software. As I did on the first try I turned off Zone
Alarm Pro and proceeded, the installation went to a certain point where it
reboots and restarts the computer and finishes the installation. It looked
like the thing was not going to finish again but I just happened to notice
that Zone Alarm had turned back on at reboot so I turned it off and lo and
behold the installation completed correctly.

I went into all that detail for the benefit of anyone else who should by
chance run into the same problem. It was unfortunate in my case that neither
HP or Zone Alarm gave any visible indication that the installation was being
affected by an outside source.

Thanks again for reading and responding.

Cecil

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Wow! Thanks for the feedback. I confess I got pretty fed up with the
intrusiveness of ZAP and switched to Kaspersky (for both virus protection
and firewall) when I got my new computer. It's been much more satisfactory.

 

[C. Britton]

I'll admit that I have been bothered by Zone Alarm too and every year I say
to myself I am going to try something else next year. Then when the time
comes to renew I ask myself am I being foolish? Despite its intrusiveness the
darned thing has always kept me safe so I have always answered myself with
don't kick a winner out the door.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I know people who practice what they call "safe hex" who run without any
anti-virus or firewall at all (except possibly a router used as a firewall),
relying on their own caution. I'm not that brave, but I do get frustrated by
an AV/firewall app that cries wolf too often. I have to admit that my first
year with Kaspersky was rather trying, as the popup stopper blocked even the
popups I *wanted* to see (when I'd clicked on a link to a page that would
appear in a popup window), and I had to learn to press Ctrl or Shift or
something to override it (right-clicking the Kasperky systray icon and
choosing Allow had no effect at all).

Since I renewed this year, however, I haven't had any problem at all. I
don't know whether Kaspersky got smarter, or there's less conflict with IE7,
or what, but I have found it quite hassle-free. It's more expensive than
Norton or McAfee or ZAP, and you have to trust your security to Russian
programmers, but aside from that...

 

[Terry Farrell]

I've never had any problem with either WinXP firewall or Vista firewall. I
really cannot see the need for an additional firewall if you are behind a
NAT router. There is a miniscule chance of being attacked - but it is
miniscule.

Running without AV rather worries me because I do get SPAM emails blocked
that have attached viruses. I know that I would not open them because they
are spam and Outlook and Hotmail filters recognize them as such. But there
is always the slim possibility that a new evolution of SPAM email will slip
through to my In Box with a virus attached and I will open it in a moment
when my guard is down.

I have already compromised my bank card once - but at least I realised
immediately what a stupid error I had made and got my bank to stop the card
immediately. Only a minor inconvenience. But a virus could do all sorts of
mischief before you realize it.

Terry Farrell