Rapidly flashing mouse icon

[Hurricane Andrew]

Very strange issue that just started occuring. I'm running Word 2007, SP1
with all updates applied on 32-bit Vista Business SP1 machine on a Windows
2003 domain.

Whenever I am in the program, even a blank document, the mouse icon flashes
rapidly between the "busy" icon, the regular mouse pointer, and the I-beam
cursor. It never steals focus from the text of the document. By that, I
mean tat I an still type and edit the document, though typing is certainly
"jerky" and slow.

Also, the problem seems to be user specific. I does not occur with other
users logged into the PC. I even went to the trouble of uninstalling Office
2007 and reinstalling it, but the problem still occurs. It doesn't matter if
the document is on remote machine or if it's on the local computer, and as I
stated it occurs as soon as Word is launched, with a blank new document or
even with no document window at all open. It's very annoying and
inconvenient. It's rapidly approaching the point of making the application
unusable.

Any thoughts?

"Hurricane" Andrew
Milford, DE

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

If it's user-specific, then it's probably a settings corruption issue,
either a problem with normal.dotm or with the Data key in the registry. It
can also be a problem with an installed add-in, but it's usually quicker to
try renaming normal.dotm and/or the Data key in the registry--since those
are the more frequent culprits--and to resort to trying to disable add-ins
if neither of the other two bring relief.

More on troubleshooting this and related problems here (the name of the
article notwithstanding):

http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/ProblemsStartingWord.htm

 

[Hurricane Andrew]

Thanks for the responses!

Unfortunately, none of those solutions have helped. I renamed the
normal.dotm template in my user/appdata/roaming/microsoft/templates folder
and deleted the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Word\Data
key. Still the same problem. I also disabled all add-ins (actually, I had
done that before). I even attempted to copy the normal.dotm template from
another profile to no avail.

Any other thoughts?

 

[Terry Farrell]

Does it happen when your start Word in Safe Mode? From Start, Run, type in

winword /a

and press enter. Word opens in Safe Mode. How is it now?

Terry

 

[Hurricane Andrew]

Sorry. Yes, it also still occurs in Safe Mode, whether with the /a switch,
or the /safe switch (not sure if there's a difference or not).

 

[Hurricane Andrew]

I had done that, but never noticed anything strange, but this time I did
notice that the print spooler service was quite active (spoolsv.exe). I
suspended the service, and the problem went away, resumed and it came back!
Of course, that's not a solution since printing is kind of important, but at
least we know where to look now.

What could Word be doing constantly, even on a fresh start or blank document
that is trying to use the spooler service? I doubt it's the service itself
since this only impacts Word, and I did verify that by launching other Office
apps (Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook) and spoolsv.exe was it's usual quiet self.

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

If it doesn't happen with other users, but does still happen when using /a
or starting Word in safe mode, then my next guess would be that you have a
corrupted Windows user profile. Unfortunately, if that's the case, the only
resolution I've discovered is to create a new user profile, and scrap the
old one. Inconvenient, yes... but, if the problem is annoying enough, it
might be worth the inconvenience.

 

[Hurricane Andrew]

One more tidbit of information:

If I stop then restart the spooler service (net stop spooler...net start
spooler), the problem goes away until the next time I launch Word.

 

[Hurricane Andrew]

Got it fixed. Here's what was going on.

I attempted to isolate the problem using Process Moinitor. What I
discovered was that Word and spoolsv were having issues with my default
printer name: "Vista Lanier - B/W". This is somewhat odd in that no other
app seemed to have issue with it, at least any noticable issue. I changed
the default printer to one without a "/" in the name, and the problem
vanihed. On a hunch, I removed the "/" from the original default printer's
name, and Viola! Issue solved.

Lesson learned: don't use "/" when naming printers, even if it seems like it
orks OK.

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

Wow. I've encountered similar errors in the past in much older versions of
Windows, but I thought that modern naming conventions had put us past that
point. Welcome back to the 1990s.

--
Herb Tyson MS MVP
Author of the Word 2007 Bible
Blog: http://word2007bible.herbtyson.com
Web: http://www.herbtyson.com

 

[Hurricane Andrew]

LOL! I know what you mean. I was leaping with joy when Windows finally
moved beyond the 8.3 DOS filename limitation! At least this info might be
helpful to someone, unless I'm the only one who was silly enough to use that
character in a printer name

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

Nope... thinking back, I recall being burned by that same thing about 5 or
10 years ago. Only, the result was different... danged if I can remember
what the result was, but I recall that removing the / from the name was the
cure.

--
Herb Tyson MS MVP
Author of the Word 2007 Bible
Blog: http://word2007bible.herbtyson.com
Web: http://www.herbtyson.com

 

[Khushal Thakur]

I changed the default printer to a pdf printer (cutePDF) and the muse stopped flashing in Word, but when i changed the default printer back to a network printer the flashing hourglass reappeared in word -

Very strange issue that just started occuring. I'm running Word 2007, SP1
with all updates applied on 32-bit Vista Business SP1 machine on a Windows
2003 domain.

Whenever I am in the program, even a blank document, the mouse icon flashes
rapidly between the "busy" icon, the regular mouse pointer, and the I-beam
cursor. It never steals focus from the text of the document. By that, I
mean tat I an still type and edit the document, though typing is certainly
"jerky" and slow.

Also, the problem seems to be user specific. I does not occur with other
users logged into the PC. I even went to the trouble of uninstalling Office
2007 and reinstalling it, but the problem still occurs. It doesn't matter if
the document is on remote machine or if it's on the local computer, and as I
stated it occurs as soon as Word is launched, with a blank new document or
even with no document window at all open. It's very annoying and
inconvenient. It's rapidly approaching the point of making the application
unusable.

Any thoughts?

"Hurricane" Andrew
Milford, DE

On Monday, July 14, 2008 8:44 PM Herb Tyson [MVP] wrote:
If it's user-specific, then it's probably a settings corruption issue,
either a problem with normal.dotm or with the Data key in the registry. It
can also be a problem with an installed add-in, but it's usually quicker to
try renaming normal.dotm and/or the Data key in the registry--since those
are the more frequent culprits--and to resort to trying to disable add-ins
if neither of the other two bring relief.

More on troubleshooting this and related problems here (the name of the
article notwithstanding):

http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/ProblemsStartingWord.htm

--
Herb Tyson MS MVP
Author of the Word 2007 Bible
Blog: http://word2007bible.herbtyson.com
Web: http://www.herbtyson.com


message news:[email protected]...

 

[Khushal Thakur]

I changed the default printer to a pdf printer (cutePDF) and the muse stopped flashing in Word, but when i changed the default printer back to a network printer the flashing hourglass reappeared in word -

Very strange issue that just started occuring. I'm running Word 2007, SP1
with all updates applied on 32-bit Vista Business SP1 machine on a Windows
2003 domain.

Whenever I am in the program, even a blank document, the mouse icon flashes
rapidly between the "busy" icon, the regular mouse pointer, and the I-beam
cursor. It never steals focus from the text of the document. By that, I
mean tat I an still type and edit the document, though typing is certainly
"jerky" and slow.

Also, the problem seems to be user specific. I does not occur with other
users logged into the PC. I even went to the trouble of uninstalling Office
2007 and reinstalling it, but the problem still occurs. It doesn't matter if
the document is on remote machine or if it's on the local computer, and as I
stated it occurs as soon as Word is launched, with a blank new document or
even with no document window at all open. It's very annoying and
inconvenient. It's rapidly approaching the point of making the application
unusable.

Any thoughts?

"Hurricane" Andrew
Milford, DE

On Monday, July 14, 2008 8:44 PM Herb Tyson [MVP] wrote:
If it's user-specific, then it's probably a settings corruption issue,
either a problem with normal.dotm or with the Data key in the registry. It
can also be a problem with an installed add-in, but it's usually quicker to
try renaming normal.dotm and/or the Data key in the registry--since those
are the more frequent culprits--and to resort to trying to disable add-ins
if neither of the other two bring relief.

More on troubleshooting this and related problems here (the name of the
article notwithstanding):

http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/ProblemsStartingWord.htm

--
Herb Tyson MS MVP
Author of the Word 2007 Bible
Blog: http://word2007bible.herbtyson.com
Web: http://www.herbtyson.com


message news:[email protected]...