Word hangs when trying to open documents

N

nnicelee

In one of those stressful computer mysteries:

Why would Word work fine one day, then have problems the next?

Towards the end of last week, my MS Word 2000 program,
running on Windows ME, started acting up.

When I try to open a document, the program indicates that
it's doing a virus scan, as it always did. But that usually
took a few seconds, then the doc would open.

Now, the scan starts, the hourglass appears--and
then--nothing. My system locks up.

Sometimes, before the system completely freezes, I'll get a
black message box saying "The system is dangerously low in
resources, would you like to terminate the following
application...." The program that is shown first is
"Microsoft Word [Not responding]."

I'm running exactly the same programs that ran fine earlier
last week and updated none except for the following:

1. The auto weekly update of virus definitions from Norton; and
2. The automatic MS Update which looks to date from 10/17.

I've made no other changes that I can recall to my system.

A virus scan done after the problem started found no viruses.

If I hit "alt-control-delete", when Word hangs, sometimes I
get a blue screen with the message "The system is busy
waiting for the Close Program dialogue box to be displayed.
Press any key to return to Windows." When I hit a key, I
get another blue screen with the message, "Warning. The
system is either busy or has become unstable."

At that point, everything just freezes and I have to do a
hard reboot.

Any suggestions on how I should proceed in trying to
resolve the problem?

Should I try a "system restore" to prior to the last MS
update? Reinstall Word? OR ???

Here's some further info, WRT my system resources:

Right after booting, my system resources are from 66-71%
free (it varies boot to boot, don't know why that would
be). I don't know what my resources are after I try to open
a doc, since I can't view the system resources at that
point--just the black box or blue screens.

Here's what seems to be running as soon as I boot:

Files in startup programs:
- Adobe Gamma Loader.exe
- DataViz Messenger (DataViz is the program that syncs my
Word files
with my PDA)
- HotSync Manager (syncs my Outlook calendar and "todo"
list with the
one on my PDA
- Iomega QuikSync LE (auto backup of my docs to a zip disk)
- MS Office
- Shortcut to Outlook (I like to have Outlook open first
thing every day)

When I hit alt-control-delete, these are shown:
Personal folders--Microsoft Outlook
Explorer
Ccapp
Hotsync
Dvzmsgr
Quicksync3
MSmsgr
Wkcalrem
Devldr16
Loadqm
Imgicon
Directcd
Motmon
Ltmsg
Systray
Nprotect
Ahqtb

As I said, none of these have been changed that I am aware of.
 
S

Suzanne S. Barnhill

The first step would be to disable the Norton Office Plug-in, which causes
many problems in Word and is *not* necessary for virus protection.

--
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.

nnicelee said:
In one of those stressful computer mysteries:

Why would Word work fine one day, then have problems the next?

Towards the end of last week, my MS Word 2000 program,
running on Windows ME, started acting up.

When I try to open a document, the program indicates that
it's doing a virus scan, as it always did. But that usually
took a few seconds, then the doc would open.

Now, the scan starts, the hourglass appears--and
then--nothing. My system locks up.

Sometimes, before the system completely freezes, I'll get a
black message box saying "The system is dangerously low in
resources, would you like to terminate the following
application...." The program that is shown first is
"Microsoft Word [Not responding]."

I'm running exactly the same programs that ran fine earlier
last week and updated none except for the following:

1. The auto weekly update of virus definitions from Norton; and
2. The automatic MS Update which looks to date from 10/17.

I've made no other changes that I can recall to my system.

A virus scan done after the problem started found no viruses.

If I hit "alt-control-delete", when Word hangs, sometimes I
get a blue screen with the message "The system is busy
waiting for the Close Program dialogue box to be displayed.
Press any key to return to Windows." When I hit a key, I
get another blue screen with the message, "Warning. The
system is either busy or has become unstable."

At that point, everything just freezes and I have to do a
hard reboot.

Any suggestions on how I should proceed in trying to
resolve the problem?

Should I try a "system restore" to prior to the last MS
update? Reinstall Word? OR ???

Here's some further info, WRT my system resources:

Right after booting, my system resources are from 66-71%
free (it varies boot to boot, don't know why that would
be). I don't know what my resources are after I try to open
a doc, since I can't view the system resources at that
point--just the black box or blue screens.

Here's what seems to be running as soon as I boot:

Files in startup programs:
- Adobe Gamma Loader.exe
- DataViz Messenger (DataViz is the program that syncs my
Word files
with my PDA)
- HotSync Manager (syncs my Outlook calendar and "todo"
list with the
one on my PDA
- Iomega QuikSync LE (auto backup of my docs to a zip disk)
- MS Office
- Shortcut to Outlook (I like to have Outlook open first
thing every day)

When I hit alt-control-delete, these are shown:
Personal folders--Microsoft Outlook
Explorer
Ccapp
Hotsync
Dvzmsgr
Quicksync3
MSmsgr
Wkcalrem
Devldr16
Loadqm
Imgicon
Directcd
Motmon
Ltmsg
Systray
Nprotect
Ahqtb

As I said, none of these have been changed that I am aware of.
 

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