Word 2003 crashes almost daily

[spdrcr5]

I am running Office 2003 Standard on a corporate network. Word has been
crashing on an almost daily basis since January. At first we thought it was
a mismatched memory issue so we replaced the memory, didn't solve the
problem. Then we thought it was the corporate image because it is a newer
image so I reimaged the machine with the latest image we have, didn't make a
difference. We found a patch for svchost when that gets corrupt and thought
that could be the issue, it wasn't.

I have uninstalled Office 2003 and installed it from CD to rule out our
Office image being an issue. I have every patch including SP2 running on
Office. The machine is WinXP Pro SP2 completely patched to date.

We ruled out all other software as Word crashed with nothing else running
after a clean boot. We ruled out temp files because this occurred on a newly
imaged machine. This morning I downloaded and replaced the HP LaserJet 4050N
network printer driver to rule that out.

The error in Event Viewer is the following:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Microsoft Office 11
Event Category: None
Event ID: 1000
Date: 4/20/2007
Time: 8:00:06 AM
User: N/A
Computer: EL049582
Description:
Faulting application winword.exe, version 11.0.8125.0, stamp 45b6910c,
faulting module mso.dll, version 11.0.8122.0, stamp 4592f985, debug? 0, fault
address 0x0004549a.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
Data:
0000: 41 00 70 00 70 00 6c 00 A.p.p.l.
0008: 69 00 63 00 61 00 74 00 i.c.a.t.
0010: 69 00 6f 00 6e 00 20 00 i.o.n. .
0018: 46 00 61 00 69 00 6c 00 F.a.i.l.
0020: 75 00 72 00 65 00 20 00 u.r.e. .
0028: 20 00 77 00 69 00 6e 00 .w.i.n.
0030: 77 00 6f 00 72 00 64 00 w.o.r.d.
0038: 2e 00 65 00 78 00 65 00 ..e.x.e.
0040: 20 00 31 00 31 00 2e 00 .1.1...
0048: 30 00 2e 00 38 00 31 00 0...8.1.
0050: 32 00 35 00 2e 00 30 00 2.5...0.
0058: 20 00 34 00 35 00 62 00 .4.5.b.
0060: 36 00 39 00 31 00 30 00 6.9.1.0.
0068: 63 00 20 00 69 00 6e 00 c. .i.n.
0070: 20 00 6d 00 73 00 6f 00 .m.s.o.
0078: 2e 00 64 00 6c 00 6c 00 ..d.l.l.
0080: 20 00 31 00 31 00 2e 00 .1.1...
0088: 30 00 2e 00 38 00 31 00 0...8.1.
0090: 32 00 32 00 2e 00 30 00 2.2...0.
0098: 20 00 34 00 35 00 39 00 .4.5.9.
00a0: 32 00 66 00 39 00 38 00 2.f.9.8.
00a8: 35 00 20 00 66 00 44 00 5. .f.D.
00b0: 65 00 62 00 75 00 67 00 e.b.u.g.
00b8: 20 00 30 00 20 00 61 00 .0. .a.
00c0: 74 00 20 00 6f 00 66 00 t. .o.f.
00c8: 66 00 73 00 65 00 74 00 f.s.e.t.
00d0: 20 00 30 00 30 00 30 00 .0.0.0.
00d8: 34 00 35 00 34 00 39 00 4.5.4.9.
00e0: 61 00 0d 00 0a 00 a.....

Followed by the following after Word finishes crashing:

Event Type: Information
Event Source: Microsoft Office 11
Event Category: None
Event ID: 1001
Date: 4/20/2007
Time: 8:02:49 AM
User: N/A
Computer: EL049582
Description:
Bucket 380792914, bucket table 1, faulting application winword.exe, version
11.0.8125.0, stamp 45b6910c, faulting module mso.dll, version 11.0.8122.0,
stamp 4592f985, debug? 0, fault address 0x0004549a.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
Data:
0000: 42 00 75 00 63 00 6b 00 B.u.c.k.
0008: 65 00 74 00 3a 00 20 00 e.t.:. .
0010: 33 00 38 00 30 00 37 00 3.8.0.7.
0018: 39 00 32 00 39 00 31 00 9.2.9.1.
0020: 34 00 0d 00 0a 00 42 00 4.....B.
0028: 75 00 63 00 6b 00 65 00 u.c.k.e.
0030: 74 00 54 00 61 00 62 00 t.T.a.b.
0038: 6c 00 65 00 20 00 31 00 l.e. .1.
0040: 0d 00 0a 00 ....

I have not tried deleting mso.dll as I have read because this has occurred
on a fresh install of Office 2003 as well.

Any help would be greatly appreciated as lately this seems to be getting
worse. I work in Word all day long and can't take all of these crashes. I
never had this issue with any other version of Word going back to Word 2.0a!

Thanks for any help.

Larry

 

[spdrcr5]

I forgot to add a couple of things.

1. Before uninstall Office 2003 I first removed all of the Office Patches
to see if there could be a bad patch. It didn't work.

2. Reinstalled all of the patches using our WSUS server, still crashed
afterwards.

3. When I uninstalled Office 2003 I used the MS utility to clean the
registry up. I know it doesn't get every registry entry but it gets the
majority of them. This didn't work either.

4. After the above is when I wiped the machine and reimaged it. This would
then give me a clean registry, fresh normal.dot, no template issues, etc.

Thanks for the help.

Larry

 

[Terry Farrell]

See http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/ProbsOpeningWord.htm

 

[spdrcr5]

Hi Terry:

Thanks for the reply. I have already read through that doc and nothing
there jives with what I am seeing. Word has never crashed on Opening. I
leave my machine on 24/7 and Word can crash after being open for 1 hour or 72
hours, there isn't any correlation to amount of time being open.

Hope that makes sense.

Larry

 

[Terry Farrell]

Is the printer local or networked? Is the printer driver up to date.

Has the temp folder been cleared of abandoned temp files (it should be empty
when all apps are closed)?

Terry

 

[dlantrip]

For what its worth, you're not alone: I'm having the identical issues with
the same XP Pro /Word configuration that you describe. Fortunately you have
saved me the needless effort to wipe my system to resolve this problem.
Hopefully, we will get a resolution soon. -david

 

[spdrcr5]

The printer is local. I updated the drive this morning to see if that stops
Word from crashing. Temp files isn't the issue because as I said it did this
on a freshly imaged machine. It also did this when I first got the machine
and temp was empty.

I'm heading home in an hour, won't be at work Monday but will know by
Tuesday if the printer driver was the issue. Like I said it generally
crashes at least once/day.

I'll update this Tuesday/Wednesday either way.

Thanks.

Larry

 

[spdrcr5]

David:

Glad I saved you having to wipe your machine. I knew that wasn't the issue,
but needed to rule it out just the same. I was down for 1.5 days getting it
back to how it was pre-rebuild.

Are you getting the same worthless info in your Event Viewer too?

Larry

 

[spdrcr5]

Just realized I wrote the wrong thing there. The printer is NOT local, it is
a network printer with a local printer driver.

Anyway, that wasn't the fix as Word just this second crashed on me as I was
about to head out the door for the weekend!

Larry

 

[Terry Farrell]

If you start Word in Safe mode using the /a switch, does it crash then?
(From Start, Run, type in

winword /a

and press enter).

Terry

 

[spdrcr5]

Don't know, I'll start Word that way beginning on Tuesday and see what happens.

Larry

 

[spdrcr5]

Terry:

I started Word using the winword /a command. It lasted running less than 30
minutes before Word crashed.

Same errors in Event Viewer.

Any other suggestions or things you can think of to try? I read somewhere
to delete mso.dll and allow it to regenerate as that file could become
corrupt. Is there any credence to this?

Thanks.

Larry

 

[Terry Farrell]

It is sounding more like a hardware problem now. I presume that this is
happening on random documents and not always the same one?

Does this always happen in Word because you are mainly a Word user (that is
you don't use anything else intensely other than Word)?

I'd suggest that next you clear up the abandoned temp files (follow the tips
in the FAQ http://www.gmayor.com/what_to_do_when_word_crashes.htm )

The symptoms are still convincing me that it is a printer related problem
and I am wondering if maybe you have a dodgy network port or adapter
installed so that Word is losing connection to the printer randomly. Do you
have a managed network where the port could be monitored for intermittent
connection or corrupt traffic?

Otherwise I suggest downloading one of the many PC hardware testing
utilities to see if that can find a problem.

 

[spdrcr5]

Terry:

What I will do is uninstall my printers and see if that does anything. I
will have a port sniffer put onto my network port and have the traffic
monitored and cross reference the findings against a future crash.

As for a possible hardware issue. I thought that as well. I got this
machine middle of January and started getting crashes then, it was crashing
daily even back then. I then had a motherboard issue where the keyboard PS/2
port died. I insisted on a new computer and got a new machine except for the
Hard drive, memory and video card. I have since replaced the memory because
we thought mismatched memory could have been the issue, obviously it wasn't.
Only other things to replace would be video card and hard drive and I highly
doubt either of those items would be at fault.

As for the documents it is never the same document because I am never in the
same document twice. I am the Knowledge Manager for the company and am
writing or rewriting literally hundreds of documents using Word. I generally
have 2 or 3 Word docs open at any one time which isn't many. I created a
very basic template to use, but Word crashes with or without the template.

The machine has 2gb ram, so that isn't the issue either.

Like I said, I'll uninstall my printers and see what happens. If it still
crashes I'll have the port sniffer put on to track it.

I'll keep you posted. Thanks for the help.

Larry

 

[Terry Farrell]

Word needs to see a printer driver (and often the printer if it is
networked) before it will work correctly. Word interrogates the printer
regularly in order to create a page layout: so you need a printer. That's
why I think it may be a problem with either the printer or the network
connection.

Terry