Word crashes just when writing letters

N

Neilos

I have Word 2000, running on XP Home, and if I start to
write a letter, and write "Dear...." then press enter for
the next line, Word crashes and closes down. If I write the
rest of the letter first, save it, then add the " Dear..."
and save again then it works OK.
Can anyone help. My computor apparently does not want me
writing letters.
Neilos
 
S

Suzanne S. Barnhill

This is not the first time I've seen this issue reported, which suggests
that it's probably due to a bizarre virus or a nasty practical joke.
 
C

Charles Kenyon

Looks to me as if it may have to do with invoking the letter wizard via the
Office Assistant, but like you, I suspect something malignant.
--

Charles Kenyon

See the MVP FAQ: <URL: http://www.mvps.org/word/> which is awesome!
--------- --------- --------- --------- --------- ---------
This message is posted to a newsgroup. Please post replies
and questions to the newsgroup so that others can learn
from my ignorance and your wisdom.
 
G

Guest

But what to do?
-----Original Message-----
Looks to me as if it may have to do with invoking the letter wizard via the
Office Assistant, but like you, I suspect something malignant.
--

Charles Kenyon

See the MVP FAQ: <URL: http://www.mvps.org/word/> which is awesome!
--------- --------- --------- --------- --------- ---------
This message is posted to a newsgroup. Please post replies
and questions to the newsgroup so that others can learn
from my ignorance and your wisdom.

to the newsgroup
so


.
Click to expand...
 
C

Charles Kenyon

I don't have anything more than guesses and there are others who read these
messages and respond whose guesses are generally more accurate than mine. My
guesses may cause you a lot of unnecessary and not helpful work. With that
warning...

Guess 1: Something in the letter wizard. Turn off the Office Assistant after
configuring the assistant to not guess what you are doing and make
suggestions. This does _not_ get at the root problem which is likely to be a
virus or other malignant code.

Guess 2: Code in normal.dot. With Word closed, rename normal.dot to
normalold.dot. If this helps, write back and I'll tell you further steps to
take.

Guess 3: A malignant Add-In. Check under Tools => Templates and Add-Ins...
and if you see any Add-Ins listed; uncheck them all. Then try writing a
letter and see what happens. If this works, write back with the names of the
Add-Ins and I'll have more guesses on what to do with them.

You may want to use these guesses in reverse order since I ended up with the
simplest fix last and hardest first.
--

Charles Kenyon

See the MVP FAQ: <URL: http://www.mvps.org/word/> which is awesome!
--------- --------- --------- --------- --------- ---------
This message is posted to a newsgroup. Please post replies
and questions to the newsgroup so that others can learn
from my ignorance and your wisdom.
 
N

Neilos

Thanks for your help,
I tried them in reverse order, and there were no addins,
and the renaming made ni difference, but when I went to
turn the assistant on so that I could check the settings it
showed me the error message as I clicked on it under the
help toolbar. I think this might be the root of the
problem, but again what to do now?
Thanks so much for your advice so far.
Cheers
Neilos
 
C

Charles Kenyon

Try reinstalling or repairing it.
--

Charles Kenyon

See the MVP FAQ: <URL: http://www.mvps.org/word/> which is awesome!
--------- --------- --------- --------- --------- ---------
This message is posted to a newsgroup. Please post replies
and questions to the newsgroup so that others can learn
from my ignorance and your wisdom.
 
W

Wasel Chemij

Go to Start - run type in winword /a
then try it. What happens?

Margaret
Click to expand...

I had a similar / identical problem that I posted about in this newsgroup
on the 27th of March and have just got it going again using the above
method. (So thanks to Margaret) Though note, you only need to start
winword with the /a option the once. After it fixes itself, you should
start it up the way you normally do.

I'd tried:
1) Hiding all the '.dot' files
2) Control Panel > Add Remove Programs > MS Office > Remove > Repair
3) (In Word) Help > Detect & Repair
4) Installing service pack (in this case it failed to install)
5) Checking for viruses
6) Tools -> templates & add-ins - untick all
(in this case there weren't any)
7) Remove items from startup path
Tools -> Options -> File locations -> {Startup Path}
in this case there weren't any)

So it looks like that either a registry or letter-wizard setting gets
corrupted or set to an unusable value, such that word flips-out when
the letter-wizard is invoked.

Given that steps 2 & 3 completed but did not get it working again I
wonder if an un-install and re-install would have worked.

Cheers
Vas
 
C

Charles Kenyon

Starting with winword /a doesn't _fix_ anything. It is a diagnostic and also
lets you run Word that once (in an out-of-the-box-default mode). It is
similar to starting Windows in Safe Mode. It must have been the other steps
you took that fixed your problem.
--

Charles Kenyon

Word New User FAQ & Web Directory:
<URL: http://addbalance.com/word/index.htm>

Intermediate User's Guide to Microsoft Word (supplemented version of
Microsoft's Legal Users' Guide)
<URL: http://addbalance.com/usersguide/index.htm>

See also the MVP FAQ: <URL: http://www.mvps.org/word/> which is awesome!
--------- --------- --------- --------- --------- ---------
This message is posted to a newsgroup. Please post replies
and questions to the newsgroup so that others can learn
from my ignorance and your wisdom.
 
W

Wasel Chemij

Starting with winword /a doesn't _fix_ anything. It is a diagnostic
and also lets you run Word that once (in an out-of-the-box-default
mode). It is similar to starting Windows in Safe Mode.
Click to expand...

The following link mentions just a few of the setting that
are changed after the use of the /a switch:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;243966
It must have been the other steps you took that fixed your problem.
Click to expand...

Could be, though I did test to see if the problem had gone away
after every individual step, and it was only in the test after
using the /a switch that the problem had gone away. The only
other thing I did, that I'd not mentioned before, was to delete
an old autoSaved file from the directory 'one step outside' the
'start up path'. (But as this file was 4 months older than
the onset of the problem I didn't think worth mentioning.)



Cheers
Vas
 
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