Word 2003 - this program can not be closed. if it is being debugge

[Ralph Malph]

Complete error message is: This program can not be closed. If it is being
debugged, please resume it or close the debugger first.

I have a whole library full of Windows 2k Pro Dell systems that are getting
this issue. The Windows XP systems in the Library are not. They are both
currently running Office 2003 Pro.

Here is the scenario on which I receive this message. Please note that the A
drive is working Fine! I can transfer to A drive from Windows Explorer
perfectly.

When a user is in Microsoft Word or Excel, he/she attempts to save to the A
drive from WORD/EXCEL. The saving progress bar shows a 90% completion until
it stops. At this point, Word freezes and the user must do a CTRL + ALT + DEL
to find that the Program is Not Responding. At this point, the error message
above pops up and hitting "ok" does nothing. Must restart the PC in order to
bring it back to life via holding down the power button, as shutdown will
hang. I can’t even kill the WinWord.exe process via task manager. It say’s
that “Access is deniedâ€. Once this problem occurs I have had trouble running
Internet Explorer and the system seems really slow for many functions but not
all of them even though Task Manager shows minimal CPU usage. Virus scans are
completed and up to date.

I wonder if it has to do with Office 2003, perhaps conflicting with 2000.

1. Why do I get this message?
2. How do I get rid of it?
3. How can I "close" the debugger when no debugger seems to be running?

I can save to the C drive and transfer over to A using Windows Explorer, but
I can not save directly to A in Word/Excel. The users being affected by this
don't know how to save to the HD and then copy their work back to the floppy
nor should they need to.

This is becoming a MAJOR problem as this is a library at a local college and
we have a lot of students who need to be able to Open, Create, Save, and
Save As their documents from/to a floppy. I have seen this happen when the
floppy has plenty of space and when it is full. If the floppy is full I would
like to think that Word should have enough brains to tell me so and to
request a new floppy with space or, if needed, tell me that it won't fit on a
floppy. (I have also noticed that Word has a VERY bad habit of putting temp
files on the floppy (~xxxxxx.tmp and ~xxxxxxx.doc) which for obvious space
considerations it should NEVER do.

Some other strange anomalies that I have noticed are that if I create a
document on the HD and open it or save it etc. I have no problems. If I take
a document and drag it to the desktop from a floppy, then open it, the system
will access the floppy. When I close the document (which does not reside on
the floppy, just was copied from it) the floppy access light goes on. I don't
know what it is doing but the floppy access light even lights up when the
floppy has been ejected. This anomaly does not happen to files that were
never on a floppy.

So how do I fix this bug so that the users quit getting locked up and can
stop loosing their data?

All systems have been setup so that the default for all Office programs is
"My Documents".

These systems are all Dell Optiplex GX 260 computers with Windows 2000 and
Office 2003 Pro installed and all updates/patches applied. They have lots of
free HD space. They are kept clean and free of infections via Deep Freeze.
Every reboot will restore the systems to a pristine condition. They are
running McAfee Anti Virus 8.0i with the latest updates. They have 512 Mb Ram.

Any and all help will be greatly appreciated !!!!!!

Thanks,

Ralph Malph

 

[garfield-n-odie]

Users should not save directly to a floppy disk or other
removable media from Office applications, because doing so
usually results in file corruption sooner or later. Save to the
hard drive, close the file, and then use Windows Explorer or My
Computer to copy the file to the removable media.

That said, did you recently install Update Rollup 1 for Windows
2000 SP4? On some systems, this update breaks the ability to
save directly to a floppy, and Microsoft is working on a hotfix
to correct the issue. See
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=891861 "Update Rollup 1 for
Windows 2000 SP4 and known issues" for more information.

 

[Ralph Malph]

Garfield -n- Odie,

Thanks for the quick reply !!!!! This could be our problem as we would
defiantly have the update installed. I can not say if the problem started
right after the installation of the update as I have only just come on board
to help solve this problem and I don't know when the update would have been
installed.

Do you know if any of the rest of the symptoms I have describe, especially
the exact error message are known to be a possible result of the SP4 rollup
update error?

Also where would I find the $NtUpdateRollupPackUninstall$ directory
mentioned in the work around? I'll do a search for it as soon as I can, but
if you can help point me in the right direction I would be grateful.

Do you have any good way's to know when Microsoft has posted a fix for this
problem, and have any suggestions as to what to use for searching in the
downloads area for the fix. I have always had trouble finding anything in MS
downloads and Knowledge base using common sense search terms. In fact I used
terms like "Word 2003 locks up when saving to floppy" and did not get a
single hit that would link to the article that you where kind enough to find
for me. Thank God for the news groups and the wonderful people like you who
are willing to help.

Ralph Malph

 

[garfield-n-odie]

c:\Windows\$NtUpdateRollupPackUninstall$ (replace c:\windows
with the name of your actual Windows directory). This
information is given in the cited KB article.

I haven't seen your exact error message before, but Update Rollup
1 supposedly affects different systems differently. I don't have
any Dell Optiplex GX 260 systems.

I don't know when Microsoft will have the fix to Update Rollup 1
available. If you get Windows updates automatically, then I
expect that the fix will be installed automatically. If not,
then you'll have to periodically check the Windows update site.
Microsoft may update the cited KB article with a link to the fix
when the fix becomes available.

The issue with temporary files being placed on floppies is
EXACTLY why users should not save directly from Office
applications to floppies or other removable media. File
corruption can occur when there is not enough space on the
removable media for the Office application to create the
necessary temporary files, and there is no way of knowing how
much space the temporary files will use. See
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=211632 "Description of how
Word creates temporary files" for more information.

 

[Ralph Malph]

Garfield -n- Odie,

Thanks again for the quick reply. I searched and found the fastfat.sys
backup location. I used the 1st work around option and after a reboot my
problem was solved. THANKS FOR THE HELP !!!!!!!!!!!!!

As for saving to floppies, I agree that it should not be done, but
unfortunately most users do not and will not understand this, much less be
able to comprehend how to copy from floppy to desktop, edit, then copy back
to the floppy. Microsoft, however, with a little common sense programming
could have added a few lines into the Word save routine to test to see if the
destination is a floppy and/or if there is enough room on it before using it
for any temp space. Just another one of those "duh" things that Microsoft is
known for missing and not owning up to and NEVER fixing.

PS...Note to Microsoft and the rest of the PC manufacturers...THE FLOPPY IS
NOT DEAD !!!!!!!!!!!!! Stop leaving them off of the new PCs/Notebooks, They
are a major resource for students and many others all over the world for
sharing backing up and transporting documents. 99% of which have no problem
fitting on an inexpensive floppy and would be a BIG waist of a CDR. I think
thumb drives are great, but I am NOT giving my $20.00+ thumb drive away to
any one, a floppy , however, is so cheap, I would have no problem giving it
away. I pray that they will get the hint.

Enough of my soap box, THNAK YOU very much for all your help,

Ralph Malph

 

[Bob Buckland ?:-\)]

Hi Ralph,

To help minimize problems when using diskettes directly
with Word turn on the setting in Tools=>Options=>Save
in Word for
[x] Make local copy of files stored on network or removable drives
========
Garfield -n- Odie,

Thanks again for the quick reply. I searched and found the fastfat.sys
backup location. I used the 1st work around option and after a reboot my
problem was solved. THANKS FOR THE HELP !!!!!!!!!!!!!

As for saving to floppies, I agree that it should not be done, but
unfortunately most users do not and will not understand this, much less be
able to comprehend how to copy from floppy to desktop, edit, then copy back
to the floppy. Microsoft, however, with a little common sense programming
could have added a few lines into the Word save routine to test to see if the
destination is a floppy and/or if there is enough room on it before using it
for any temp space. Just another one of those "duh" things that Microsoft is
known for missing and not owning up to and NEVER fixing. [snip] >>
--
Let us know if this helped you,

Bob Buckland ?
MS Office System Products MVP

*Courtesy is not expensive and can pay big dividends*

For Everyday MS Office tips to "use right away" -
http://microsoft.com/events/series/administrativetipsandtricks.mspx

 

[Ralph Malph]

Bob,

Thanks for the tip. I am sure it will be very helpful to our students. I
assume that this setting will cause ALL temp files to be generated on the
local HD. I am surprised that MS would not have made this the default.
Perhaps in the next version they will have the wisdom to do so.

Thanks again for the help,

Ralph Malph

 

[RN]

Hello Friends,

I am getting this terrible message on my Windows 2000 Preofessional. It
happens whenever i open an big Powerpoint file and try to close it i get this
nasty message:
"This program cannot be closed. If it is being debugged, please resume it or
close the debugger first"

I am stuck and dont know how to resolve this.

Rakesh

 

[Ralph Malph]

Rakesh,

Sounds like you may be experiencing the same issue I was having with word.
Read the following MS article which was suggested to me by Garfield & Odie.

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=891861

In it, it talks about a problem that affects all Office 2003 programs. You
have to get the fastfat.sys file from is backed up location and overwrite the
one in the system32\drivers dir. You can use the following line in a .bat
file to do it for you.

copy c:\winnt\system32\drivers\fastfat.sys
c:\winnt\system32\drivers\fastfat.sys.org
copy c:\winnt\$ntupdaterolluppackuninstall$\fastfat.sys
c:\winnt\system32\drivers
pause


Hope this helps,

Ralph Malph

 

[Jarhead]

Garfield -n- Odie,

Thanks for the quick reply !!!!! This could be our problem as we would
defiantly have the update installed. I can not say if the problem started
right after the installation of the update as I have only just come on board
to help solve this problem and I don't know when the update would have been
installed.

Do you know if any of the rest of the symptoms I have describe, especially
the exact error message are known to be a possible result of the SP4 rollup
update error?

Also where would I find the $NtUpdateRollupPackUninstall$ directory
mentioned in the work around? I'll do a search for it as soon as I can, but
if you can help point me in the right direction I would be grateful.

Do you have any good way's to know when Microsoft has posted a fix for this
problem, and have any suggestions as to what to use for searching in the
downloads area for the fix. I have always had trouble finding anything in MS
downloads and Knowledge base using common sense search terms. In fact I used
terms like "Word 2003 locks up when saving to floppy" and did not get a
single hit that would link to the article that you where kind enough to find
for me. Thank God for the news groups and the wonderful people like you who
are willing to help.

Ralph Malph

 

[LindaHewitt]

I encountered this problem as well. I always save files to my hard
drive and then if I need to I save it to a floppy, my a:\ drive.

Instead I get the debugger error and there is no way for me to close
down the debugger, except to reboot.

There should be a way for me to stop the debugger from running. It
would also be nice if the workaround of using Windows Explorer to save
files to the floppy would also pop up.

I have used Word 2003 for almost 3 years without a problem until after
I installed the SP 4 update for W2K on July 13, 2005. My first Word
lockup problems did not start until September and then this month.

This has been a very helpful thread.

Thanks,

Linda

 

[LindaHewitt2002]

Microsoft has just released the fix for W2K to fix this problem. Here
is the description for the download.

"Install this update to resolve an issue in which Microsoft Office
programs may stop responding when you try to save new files to a floppy
disk drive after installing Update Rollup 1 for Windows 2000 Service
Pack 4. After you install this update, you may have to restart your
computer.

"More information for this update can be found at
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/kb904368 "

Cheers,

Linda