Word only starts in 'Safe Mode'

[thomaslmb]

Hello, have recently re-installed Windows XP and MS Office Professional 2003.
(reason being that the whole system crashed when I installed Win XP SP3 on
my XP Media Center Edition).

Ever since, I get an error message when opening MS Word - and MS Outlook
(probably because I used Word as email editor) - suggesting:
1) there is an error in Word, and if I want to send an error message to
Microsoft;
2) irrespective if I say yes or no to 1, I get another prompt asking if I
want to open Word in Safe Mode;
3) selecting 'yes' leads me nowhere. Selecting 'no' makes Word open, with a
note on the top blue bar saying 'Safe Mode'.
4) then I go to the 'Help' menu, and select 'Repair' (both in Word and/or
Outlook), and wait until the repair is done.
5) does not matter if I reboot my laptop or not, the same error keeps coming
back.

Now I am looking for:
a) a proper & durable fix for this problem, or;
b) how do I uninstall Word only and then re-install it (I like to avoid
uninstalling/re-installing the whole MS Office Prof Edition 2003 suite)

Thanks a million, and best regards from sunny Stockholm,
Thomas

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Uninstalling and reinstalling is extremely unlikely to help, especially if
repairing it didn't. I find it odd that the message about Safe Mode seems to
respond to Yes and No the opposite of what you'd expect. At any rate, see if
you get any help from reading
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/ProblemsStartingWord.htm; the problem
could be as simple as having the "wrong" printer driver installed.

 

[thomaslmb]

Thanks Suzanne,
went through the recommendations one by one, and it was when I arrived at
one of them when the problem was resolved:

I renamed normal.dot to normal.old, then opened Word and it worked normally
again.

Checked the C:\Documents and Settings\Thomas\Application
Data\Microsoft\Templates path again, and a new normal.dot file had been
created.

Great help - much appreciated! Also liked the speed at which the response
was provided - super!
Kind regards, Thomas

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I'm glad that worked for you. Note that some of your customizations (if any)
can be retrieved from the renamed Normal.dot using the Organizer.

 

[The Nightingale]

I am sorry to intrude on your message string but I need any help that I can
get! - what is this normal.old and normal.dot? It was suggested for my
problem of not being able to open Word 2003 at all - only getting error
message loop from Word has encountered a problem and needs to close - to -
Word has detected a problem with current preferences - restore to default? If
I say yes then I get the other message back - if I say no I go nowhere. I was
advised to try to delete a registry which I tried but got lost in the
instructions and also to change something from normal.dot to normal.old but
do not know where to find them?
-- Yours
JN

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Start with http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/ProblemsStartingWord.htm and
all will be revealed.