A Challenge?

[dsc]

I think this may be a tough one.

I was altering a macro that opens an Access database and works with it.
Something caused the computer to freeze. I had to do a power-off.

When I restarted the computer and opened word, I could no longer run that
macro or edit macros. I have a toolbar icon for the macro. When I click on
it, Word crashes. When I go to tools->macros->edit, Word crashes. When I go
to tools->macros->Visual Basic Editor, Word crashes. I can't get into the
Visual Basic Editor no how no way. Trying makes Word crash.

Here's what I've tried:

Uninstall and reinstall of Microsoft Office.
Delete all temp files.
Delete all dot files.
Set Pagefile.sys to size zero.
Use Norton Utilities Disk Doctor to look for crosslinked files, etc.
(nothing found)

Even with a brand-new clean install of Word and a brand-new clean
normal.dot, when I go to tools->macros->edit, Word crashes. When I go to
tools->macros->Visual Basic Editor, Word crashes.

Our office IT guy (who may be a theta geek but is definitely not an alpha
geek) wants to reformat the hard disk and reinstall everything. I'd rather
open my veins. I've been tweaking that computer to suit myself for two years
now, and I don't want to lose all that.

Anybody ever heard of this?

Any guesses?

All assistance gratefully accepted.

 

[Malcolm Smith]

If it's that serious then I would reformat and reimage the hard drive.
The cost of your time spent on this would perhaps be astronomical and if
you want to mess about further it would cost your firm a lot more.

Of course, the other way would be to remove Office and remove the
normal.dot files which may be lying about and then go through the registry
to remove any references to Office or the IDE.

Like I say, it may be cheaper for your firm to give you a new disk image
rather than let you play about for few more hours trying to fix the
problem.

If it gets like this then make sure that your work is backed up and
reformat.

- Malc

 

[fdde]

And after you are done re-tweaking, I would make a cloned Image of your
drive, if I were you. Should this happen in the future, it would only take
20 minutes for you to restore around 6 GB of data. Norton's Corporate
cloning software is really good. Good luck!
vince

 

[dsc]

Thanks for the replies, guys.

Backing up data tonight, format C and restore in the morning. Sigh. It will
take forever to get everything back to suit me.

I was hoping...ah, that's just not the kind of thing anybody would know.

Thanks again.

 

[fdde]

by the way, what's a theta geek and what's an alpha geek? (Curious to know!)

 

[dsc]

Chimps and gorillas arramge themselves in a hierarchy, with the biggest,
baddest male being called the alpha male.

The term "alpha geek" extends that to geeks, in which the geekiest, most
knowledgeable and capable computer expert is the "alpha geek," excercising
dominence over the other geeks by virtue of his superior abilities.

"Theta" is the eighth letter of the Greek alphabet, so presumably a theta
geek would be far down on the pecking order from an alpha geek by virtue of
being less capable.

But I was being overly generous. After today, I would call the guy at my
company an omega geek.

It took him most of the day to get the machine up and running with Win2000
and Office2000 installed.

 

[Malcolm Smith]

by the way, what's a theta geek and what's an alpha geek? (Curious to
know!)

I've seen these on wildlife programs.

When a tribe of geeks live out alone in the bush, sleeping late at night
in the Binary Trees, moving along the Banyan Vines and survive by foraging
for Root Nodes or catching Phishes in their Neural Nets; some sort of
pecking order in the tribe is required.

This, then, is where the Alpha Geeks rule the Domain whilst the rest of
the geeks are just Servers.

- Malc