FWIW, I find that Norton AntiVirus does not adversely affect Word (or
anything else) provided I leave the Office Plug-in disabled. I've been
pleased with the ease of downloading updates automatically, etc. A lot of
people complain about NAV and recommend other AV apps, but I'm not
dissatisfied with NAV, so I see no reason to change.
As for McAfee, I did have that on a previous system and recall mostly that I
never did understand how to use it. My husband installed McAfee Office on
his system, later uninstalled it, and modified the text on the box, which
says "The All-In-One Solution to Protect, Secure, Optimize, and Repair Your
PC," crossing out "Protect, Secure, Optimize, and Repair" and writing in
"F**k Up." You may judge from that that he wasn't very happy with it!
--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site:
http://www.mvps.org/word
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.
BINGO!!
I just now disabled my OnTrack FixIt Utilities 4.0 virus scanner, and now
Word loads in less than 5 seconds. So it looks like Norton is not the only
virus scanner that interferes with Word.
I used McAfee until about a year and a half ago and now I don't remember why
I changed I was experiencing some kind of performance problem with the
computer, and a friend of mine recommended the product, which I subsequently
purchased at a local computer store. It surprises me that I never made the
mental correlation of Word performance deterioration with the new virus
scanner, except that at the time I tended to use this computer more for CAD,
spreadsheet work, and internet connection than for Word Processing.
Thank you so much for hanging in there to a successful diagnosis. Now I
need to find out how I can have functional Word AND virus protection.
Regards,
Jerry Isaacs
Hi Jerry,
If you have checked and rechecked Normal.dot, add-ins, macros (which
if you recreated Normal.dot you shouldn't have any),
Speech/Handwriting Recognition, not on a network, etc. then I'd say
you have ruled out every possibility I can think of.
FWIW, I have used Word 97 and Word 2000 on a Windows 98 box for a
couple years and I never encountered a delay in starting Word.
The new Normal.dot bit still intrigues me. If Normal.dot is present
then Word will load Normal.dot as a global add-in, not listed in the
Templates and Add-ins dialog box, but it is 'opening and loading'
Normal.dot when it starts. That makes me think another application
could be monitoring the opening/closing of files and in turn is
causing the delay.
You noted you disabled everything that is non-essential in MsConfig,
but that doesn't necessarily cover all running processes.
Unfortunately since you use Windows 98 you are unable to display all
Processes in your Task Manager. Perhaps there is a utility available
that will do this??
What virus scanner do you use? Have you tried disabling it?
Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email can not be acknowledged.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Word FAQ:
http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine:
http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site:
http://mvps.org/
Explorer verifies that the only file named normal.dot is in my
templates directory.
Word verifies that there are no global templates and addins.
My Word and Office Startup Directories are empty.
The Attached Template is 'Normal' for the document I pull up.
The com add-in command on my toolbar verifies that there is nothing
there.
Immediately after bootup Word will load and pull in a modest document
within 10 seconds or so. If I hurry, I can close word and reopen it a
second time in about 10 seconds.
But if I boot and do nothing else for 5 minutes, it then takes Word ab
out 45 seconds to load and pull in the doc.
If I erase normal.dot before I load Word, the app loads really fast,
but then it spends a long time recreating normal.dot when I exit.
If I modify normal.dot, this does nothing to improve performance, but
I am able to modify normal.dot, and any changes function as intended.
I realize that this is ridiculous, but all evidence leads me to
believe that my W98 Operating System 'goes stale' after about 5
minutes and cannot load any version of Word efficiently after that
time, even if no other applications are used in that initial 5
minutes. I have eliminated everything that is not vital in msconfig
and the same behavior manifests itself. The 'stale OS' hypothesis is
corroborated by the fact that I had the same sluggishness problem with
an earlier version of Word in Office 98?? on this computer, which I
replaced with Office XP to no avail. It was precisely that problem
that prompted me to uninstall the earlier version of Office and
install this one. I do not recall whether Word ever worked properly
on this computer. The computer is about 4.5 years old, as evidenced
by the date on the C:\My Documents directory - 1/7/99. I purchased
the computer new. All other applications, including Office
applications (Excel, Powerpoint) function about as well as they do on
other computers.
Should I now pursue the problem in some I've-Got-a-Flaky-OS Newsgroup
based on my tentative conclusion that, "It's not Word's fault - its
Windows."
This reminds me of an incident 25 years ago when I ran a branch office
in Dallas for a Cincinnati-based organization. The home office
decided we needed to put a modem on our IBM word processor, so I
purchased the IBM-specified modem from Harvey Hubbell (the only
provider) in Chicago. Then IBM came in and attached the modem to the
machine, but required me to get the phone company to plug it into the
phone jack. Of course the thing wouldn't work at first, and every
time the IBM rep looked at the problem he blamed the phone company.
Every time the phone company rep looked at the situation, he blamed
IBM. Finally I got both reps in the same room and guess what. They
blamed Harvey Hubbell. I sent the modem back to Chicago and guess
what. Nothing was wrong with the modem. Eventually I got IBM and the
phone company together in the same room and told them not to leave
until the thing was working. They finally got it to work, but neither
rep would admit whose fault it was that it wouldn't work from the
start. IBM sent me a bill for several hundred dollars, which I told
the home office not to pay. Since the phone company refused to admit
any fault, I had to assume it was IBM to blame.
At least this time we know it's Microsoft to blame, but we also know
that they won't fix it. They'll just suggest an 'upgrade'. Ain't
monopoly wonderful?
