MS Word tries to connect to Internet and hangs ???

[AIO]

Hi all,

Whenever I open MS Word, the dial-up dialog of my ADSL connection pops
up, hence I assume that MS Word is trying to connect to the Internet.
(I have Win98SE and Office XP Standard Edition, and the computer is in
my office).

I click on Cancel, fearing it might be a Trojan or something calling
back, and MS Word totally hangs and freezes. The menu items doesn't
work, I can't type a thing on the document. Word completely ignores my
keyboard and mouse clicks. I then have to Ctrl+Alt+Del and 'end' the
Word process in order to get rid of it. This does not effect the
entire Win98SE system, the other programs run fine, even MS Excel...

I made a quick research on the Internet before posting this, and the
only thing I found is that MS Word could be appointed as the HTML
editor in Internet Explorer's Options>Programs. But I'm sure I didn't
change it to MS Word. I can't check it now as my computer is in my
office as I mentioned before. But this still wouldn't explain why MS
Word would hang after I cancel the dial-up dialog, would it?

I hope someone could give me a hand on this one. How can I stop it? MS
Word isn't supposed to reach the Internet, right? Could it be a Trojan
well hidden in MS Word or normal.dot? However, I ran Security Task
Manager, a third party program that lists all running processes, even
hidden ones and I didn't see anything suspicious there.

Your input will be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

[Stephen Knapp]

This could be tricky. I've seen this before, many years ago. It
probably isn't Word. Go to your control panel, select Internet Options,
click the Programs tab, and make sure that Word isn't selected as your
"Internet Call" program. If it is, change that to "nothing" or NetMeeting
(if nothing else). Word can be your HTML editor - that shouldn't be a
problem. If that doesn't clear the problem, post back to this thread and
we'll think of something else.

Steve in Ohio

(To properly maintain the Newsgroup, click the YES or NO button on your
original posting to clear your entry, once you have or have not resolved this
issue with this correspondence thread – Steve.)