# Word 2003 crashes



## fleck (Feb 22, 2005)

Hi expert(s),
I've searched the forum and i couldn't find solution for my problem. I am running Office 2003 on WinXP, both with latest patches and service packs. Although when I start Word 2003 it runs for 10-15 sec and crashes. Next time I start it it recovers the last file. I've tried with different files but it crashes again. I have no problems with the other Office applications. The computer is new and is not connected to Internet. I have Norton Antivirus CE with the latest virus definitions.

Can someone help?

Thank you


----------



## nysdal (Mar 3, 2005)

*exact same problem*

Fleck I have exactly the same problem. It seemed to help when I increased the virtual memory to 4096, but now I seem to be as bad as I was originally. It may help you for a while too. Have you heard anything?

I just found an article that suggested a corrupted normal.dot file was the cause. I found 4 instances of normal.dot on my system and deleted them with word shut down. Word re-creates the file on start. It seems to have helped.


----------



## knish (Mar 14, 2005)

*Office 2003 - XP problems*

I just purchased a Dell 5160 Notebook running XP and Office 2003 and had the same problem from startup. Word shuts down and send an error report after only 10-15 sec of operation. It also manifests itself when writing email and using Outlook - it is extremely frustrating! 

I spent 12hours with Dell Support (mostly on hold to Bangalore) and, after searches looking for a nonexistent normal.dot in my system, they had me reinstall windows from factory presets. After doing so and getting all my data files back online, it is erroring out again.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!!

Regards,
KNish


----------



## YeeFam (Nov 19, 2004)

You should have Normal.dot.

There should be a copy in:
C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates

On my machine - I have a copy in my account's \Application Data\Micro......

Did you enable MS Office in the Owner account and then try to run it in the User account?

Sounds like MS Word is not set up correctly - try running it in the Owner Account. But Normal.dot should always be present.


----------



## hackop (Apr 12, 2005)

*Same Here*

Yes, I too am experiencing the same issue. I've reinstalled (and also removed and reinstalled) Office 2003. I've uninstalled Adobe Acrobat 7 (as it has a PDF plugin), uninstalled Symantec Antivirus Corporate Ed. 9. Tried Word with and without the Office Updates installed. Removed the Normal.dot file. Removed and recreated the paging file. No luck. Any help is appreciated.


----------



## YeeFam (Nov 19, 2004)

Seems to be a nasty problem -if all of you do indeed are having the same problem - the problem is going to be what Word is doing as it starts up.

Only one user states that the problem has always been present - Word never worked, not even once. Is this statement actually true? Has Word ever worked?

My theory: Word is starting up and checks through the directories to see if there are any doc files that are to be recovered due to a crash. And it is in this search and/or trying to recover the file(s) that Word crashes. And these files would persist with an Office uninstall/reinstall.

knish actually installed a fresh OS and Office - but I like to know if Word was tested BEFORE moving his data back.

So - If these were my machines, I would:
• Uninstall Office (reboot machine - my habit is always reboot after installs and uninstalls)
• Clean your computer of temporary files, following is a link that has some hints, they are talking about solving a similar problem• http://www.gmayor.com/what_to_do_when_word_crashes.htm​• Defrag your drive
• Install Office
• Test Word

I would focus on cleaning the computer of temp files. Maybe one of you could do further research on where else MS may be putting Office temp files that is not listed in the link provided.

When installing Office, I would consider taking the computer off the internet, turn off Virus check, Spybot, etc. 

(I once had a DOC file that got corrupted and crashed Word 95 everytime iit processed it. It crashed Word when it was going through the document, and if this was a document it was trying to recover, it would had rendered Word useless.)

Good luck and Ppease keep us posted...


----------



## hackop (Apr 12, 2005)

*After a long night...*

After a long night fighting this Word thing, was still unable to come to a conclusion, but have a few more issues that aren't mentioned here. Was wondering if they persist with the others also. 

First off, Word will not crash if you keep moving. Basically, keep typing, opening menus, etc, it will not crash. It will try to crash, and move slowly in spurts, but until you stop moving and doing anything in word for a good 5-10 seconds, it will operate. Not very helpful if you actually want to use the program, but an interesting phenomenon.

We also tried many troubleshooting techniques which didn't work, but I may as well list them so you don't all waste your time.

Uninstalled/Reinstalled office (of course)
Removed all Normal.dot files
During each uninstall/reinstall, I manually went through all temp directories and cleaned out all temp files. Even the OfficeUpdate files folder. (Temp folders included: C:\Temp, C:\<windowsdir>\Temp, C:\Documents and Settings\<my user>\Temp ... and also Temporary Internet Files
Uninstalled Acrobat Pro 7
Uninstalled SAV 9 CE
Removed two sticks of new RAM that was installed recently
Switched RAM slots on the MB to make sure one slot wasn't bad
Did full RAM checks
Did a full CHKDSK on the drive (Ran a defragmentation also)
Replaced video drivers
Even replaced/updated the mouse drivers for the logitech setup we had
Removed the pagefile completely
Recreated the page file (multiple sizes)
Installed an older version of Office (Office XP)
Tried, again, installing the Office Updates
Ran a full virus/spyware check using multiple utilities (SpyBot, Microsoft Antispyware, SAV 9 CE for virus, and Trend Micro online scan for virus/trojan/spyware)

After all of this, and probably a few minor steps that I'm not recalling, Word still locks up. We tried opening other Office applications again, going through each one. They all work, except Publisher. Publisher also crashes out like Word, but does it faster.


----------



## YeeFam (Nov 19, 2004)

Excellent information!

So - just to be clear - old Office XP works, Office 2003 does not.

Word and Publisher only Office app that fails.

Trying to figure out if Word/Publisher is effected by something or Word/Publisher is doing something to cause these problems.

So -
Event viewer any help?

Just for troubleshooting.....
• Test 1: Halt as many background agents like anti-virus, spyware, etc. No screensavers. This may be a waste of time - but it will eliminate them as the culprits and will give you more system resources.

• Test 2: Does Office even run in safe mode? Easy test point- lot less things going on.

You guys got one tough problem.

Got to figure out what does Word and Publisher do that the other apps do not -


----------



## hackop (Apr 12, 2005)

No, Office XP (well, Word XP) does NOT work. Sorry for being unclear. 

The event viewer is, unfortunately, no help either.
As far as background tasks go, I had tried running it without antivirus (we don't leave spybot's agent on, nor Microsoft's Antispyware agents), and also manually went through the Task Manager and ended all the non-critical processes. Word/Publisher still crash.

We did try safe mode, but that also did not work. (I knew there was something I forgot to mention).
The only thing I can even think of that Word/Publisher have in common are template files. But if that were the case, one would think that a reinstall would cure a template problem.

Unfortunately I'm not at the client any more. We spent 6 hours last night working this and still, no solution. We'll let them decide what they want to do next. We can only do so much for free (we didn't bill for the 6 hours). They may go to a new machine over this.

The machine we were working on is a HP a250n. Pentium 4 w/ HT, 1gig of RAM, 120gig HD, dual CD drives (one of which is dvd burner, if that's at all relevant). Don't remember the processor speed. We have been having some issues on and off over the past few months with this machine, though they seem unrelated to this problem. Unless of course we're experiencing some odd, slow, hardware death. Perhaps something on the MB or the processor. Who knows.


----------



## YeeFam (Nov 19, 2004)

In terms of hardware, I would look at memory.
Memory hardware: I think the long tests that puts in the "worst" case patterns may isolate something.
I may even reduce the amount of memory in the system - this would not be the first time MS apps blows up when there is lots of memory!

My next suspect would be the hard drive - data paged down to the drive may not be coming back correctly - this causing Word to crash.

Word will crash if the document is corrupted - it has done that to me more then once.

nysdal seems to have changed some of the failure sympthoms by changing virtual memory settings - impacting memory useage and disk paging.


----------



## josty (Apr 15, 2005)

*Word crashes*

Hi,

I have exactly this problem too: Dell Inspiron 8600, XP with SP2, Office 2003 Pro, Norton Internet Security. 

Word crashes on loading, immediately after Norton virus checks the normal.dot (I've tried excluding .doc and .dot files from Norton in Smartscan options but it takes no notice and checks them anyway!) I've tried replacing the normal.dot as well - no difference

However I have identified one significant factor: Word only crashes when I've disconnected the laptop from the internet, (via LAN). If I reconnect the ethernet cable its fine - kind of implies there is some sort of online operation Word is trying to do ? 

Any ideas?

With thanks

josty


----------



## lsunstein (Apr 16, 2005)

*MS Word 2003 crashes with Win XP Pro*

I have a similar recurring problem while using MS Word 2003 on Windows XP 
Pro. I have owned my laptop for over 2 years now and this problem has only started within the last 4 months.

*PROBLEM: * MS Word 2003 suddenly displays garbled text and crashes my computer while typing or scrolling. The problem does not seem to be related specifically to cutting and pasting information from the internet, Acrobat Reader 6.0 or from any other application, nor does it appear to be caused by adding or removing hardware, with the exception listed below.

I believe that I have narrowed the problem down to two things, connecting an external USB hard drive that recently crashed or Adobe Acrobat 6.0 Pro add-ons and Macros. As far as the hard drive is concerned, I copied everything from that hard drive to another hard drive and reformatted and re-copied all of the information that I could save back onto the external (crashed) hard drive. The frequency of the crashes seem to increase 
after every crash. 

Here is what I have done to try and resolve the problem:
1. I have attempted to remove files from my "startup" menu and that 
does not help. 
2. I have searched for and removed all "~*.tmp" files from my computer, 
and that has not helped. 
3. I have disabled all MACROS for MS Word to no avail.
4. I have even turned off all smart tags in MS Word, because it even 
caused a crash while using Word as my text editor in MS Outlook.
5. I have scanned all hard drives with Norton Anti-virus 2003 with the 
latest updates.
6. I have scanned all hard drives with UPS Spyware, version 8.2.0.9 and 
have removed all spyware from my system.
7. I am also using the firewall provided with Windows XP (SP2).
8. I have attempted to "restore" my computer to a point prior to 
connecting the external USB hard drive, but the problem persists.
9. I have tried to uninstall all programs, and reload them one at a 
time, with no success (computer still crashes).
10. I have reformatted my hard drives twice already, and have reloaded 
all associated software.
11. I have recently applied (15 April, 2005) all updates and patches to both MS Office and Win XP and Word is still crashing. MS Outlook has not crashed in over two weeks, but I'm not sure what I did to stop that from occurring.
12. I have even read that outdated or corrupt video drivers may cause this type of problem, but I've updated them and I'm still having problems.

My computer worked fine for almost a month, until I connected the afore 
mentioned 250GB USB hard drive to my system. 2 days after connecting the hard drive to my computer, the problem started again. 

Please help, this is absolutely driving me nuts, and I'm afraid I might 
throw my computer out of the window of my 4th story apartment building!!!


----------



## teoretik (Apr 18, 2005)

*Word crashed after writing*

My problem is, that word2003 crashes after starting to write, when word is open together with MS outlook. If I want to use word, I have to close completely MS outlook (via task manager), then start word. When word was open as first (outlook as second), everything works fine. Can anybody help?


----------



## cyberia (Apr 22, 2005)

Hello All

Okay I was having the same problem, crashes within 30-45 seconds. I went through the same battery. After reading many boards here is what seems to have worked is:

* Uninstall office 2003
* Find all *ormal.do? files
* Go into the registry and remove office. I used the find function, but be very careful not to remove mindlessly. I recomend backing it up frist.
*Restart and clean all temp files
*Install office 2003 in directory othere than default
* Restart the system
This will be the second day I have used it, so far so good..

TTYL


----------



## cyberia (Apr 22, 2005)

*False success*

Hi 

It worked for a little while then started crashing immeditately again. I have installed a different office 2003 and still have the problem. Could this be a virus issue? I have

Removed completely
Cleared temp filies
reboot
Removed normal
Edit the Registry
Reboot
Install in a different directory


This is very upsetting, has anyone made progress?

TTYL


----------



## coopmeister (May 5, 2005)

Same issue here. WinXP Pro2, Office 2003, custom-built P4 machine -all service packs/updates. The crashes are especially noticable is I try to cut and paste information from the web into Word. It also occures when doing simple tasks like selecting text and adding numbered bullets to it. I have used page setup to adjust the documents. I thought that may be an issue, maybe it affects the templates, but I'm not sure. I've done everything everyone else has posted to fix the issue. It doesn't matter. I get a crash. I've searched MS website for information; nothing. I'm about ready to chuck Office2003. I just can't work with it, even though it always saves the documents before it crashes. It's too bad I didn't appreciate Office 2000 when I had it.
I'll keep checking back in case someone comes up with a cure.
coop


----------



## mattu (May 4, 2005)

*Possible solution*

We are running WinXP with Office 2k3 Professional on a laptop. We have had the same problem with Word. It runs great when it is on a network, but as soon as we take it off the network (unplug the cable, remove from site, etc.), Word will crash everytime. We tried everything that has been mentioned above, reinstalling Office, formatting, downgrading Office, etc, etc.
We are running Novell on our network. We found that if we remove the Novell client from our machine (basically disconnect all network drives) and then remove the laptop from the network (unplug the cable), we have no problems with Word. It seems that Word is looking for network drives even if there is no network available. We also disabled all the autosave functions in Word (not sure if that is necessary if all the network drives are disconnected). Hopefully this helps out.


----------



## Kahn10 (May 9, 2005)

*summary*

I'm also experiencing a similar problem on a customer's PC, except that his whole computer completely locks up (even the clock stops moving). he is running XP with MS office 2003 (Sutdent and teacher) on a laptop. One similarity I've seen when it was mentioned was a consistant use of Symantec products (both symantec and norton). He also experiences the problem when disconnected from a network, but it's not entirely clear to me if this is a red herring. Could everyone wirte in on whether you've have this problem with symantec software on your ocmputer? And whether your auto update is running (this will run even if you have the firewall and antivirus disabled). There is also a plugin for office in NIS/NAV 2004 and above which I disabled and didn't seem to make a difference.
Someone mentioned that they experienced the same problem while in safe mode, I just wanted to make sure that that is the consensus. 

thanks,
Conn


----------



## Kahn10 (May 9, 2005)

One other thing, everyone should have office 2003 SP1 installed, there is a fix for a problem very much like this one in SP1. I'd hate to have people who haven't yet done this wait for someone to come up with a solution for this and find out it doesn't work for them.


----------



## pollodiantres (May 13, 2005)

same problem here with a HP laptop, XP Pro and Office 2003XP. Word keeps on crashing within 10-15 seconds. I tried most of what has been suggested here (even reinstalling WinXP) and nothing really works. I unistall Office XP, clean the registry, delete the normal.dot (s) and install Office 2000 but the crash was still there. So far the only thing that seems to work is to change to a new username and logon with that new account. I created a new account some three months ago and keept on using Office 2000 with no problems. Then, some two weeks ago I decided to give Office XP a try...(I though that maybe was an issue with WinXP or Office XP that has been addressed)... big mistake... the crash was there again. I have SP3 installed and the crash is live and well.
I´m into my fourth account so far, and I´m unistalling Office XP for good now and staying with 2000.


----------



## Chevy (Jul 25, 2003)

Good thread, as far as info goes, but too many "Me, too" posts.

If you are having the same problem, please start your own thread and reference this one.

I'm closing this (you can still view it) so those who need to can start their own threads.


----------

