Word 97 crashing when printing

[Edward Diener]

I have been using Word 97 for many years, and recently installed my copy
on a new computer system running Windows XP. Everything was working OK
until I updated my printer by installing an HP Laserjet 3005d printer in
place of my old Lexmark Optra R++, which was breaking down. I installed
the appropriate print drivers and have been able to print to the printer
from my editor and web browser, and just about anything else with no
problems.

Recently I went to print a Word document from within Word 97 only to be
met with a crash. The crash reads:

"The instruction at '0x7c9138b4' referenced memory at '0x00000000'. The
memory could not be read."

after which terminating the program brings up another message of the
same type and finally the program ends.

I tried uninstalling Word 97 completely, re-installing, updating with
the SR1 and SR2 patches, applying the KB830384 patch, and applying the
Off97UIP patch, all to no avail.

Has anybody else run across this problem, or a similar one which causes
printing to crash on Word 97 ? I realize most people will have upgraded
to later versions of Word already, so it just may be that I will have to
do so to get Word to work with my new printer. The interesting thing is
that the crash occurs without my actually having to do printing itself,
but even occurs if I just try to choose another printer from the Word 97
Print dialog.

 

[Terry Farrell]

The symptom is definitely of a corrupt or incompatible printer. Try going
into the Printers and Faxes Dialog and assigning a different printer as the
Windows Default. That will allow you to open Word and print to a different
printer without having the select through the Print Dialog. But after all
those crashes, go to the Temp folder and delete all the abandoned temp
files. Then try Word again with the different printer.

 

[Edward Diener]

The symptom is definitely of a corrupt or incompatible printer. Try
going into the Printers and Faxes Dialog and assigning a different
printer as the Windows Default. That will allow you to open Word and
print to a different printer without having the select through the Print
Dialog. But after all those crashes, go to the Temp folder and delete
all the abandoned temp files. Then try Word again with the different
printer.

Thanks for your suggestions.

I cleared out a bunch of files in my temp folder and changed the printer
default. Word was able to print to the other printer fine. Eventually
when I tried switching to the new printer, Word accepted it and
supposedly sent out a stream to the new printer but nothing was printed.
When I tried closing Word it told me that the a print job was still
being run, and when I told Word to end anyway and stop the print job, it
crashed as before.

It is not a corrupt printer driver as everything else prints to it, but
evidently Word 97, 10 years old, can not do it. So I think it is just
that it is an incompatible printer with such an old version of Word. I
will look into upgrading word to a later version.

I just wonder that if I pay for the latest version of Word whether those
who have an earlier version will be able to read the documents I create
and distribute with it. One nice thing about Word 97 documents was that
anybody with a later version of Word was able to read it since Microsoft
maintained backward compatibility. But I doubt this will work the other
way around, which is one of the reasons I was always reticent to upgrade.

 

[Terry Farrell]

All versions of Word have the ability to save in a compatible format for
previous versions. There are all downloadable converters for users of Word
2000, XP and 2003 to let them open Word 2007 documents.

Terry