Word crashes system after clean install

[Musicat]

I can’t get Word 200 to run even after a clean install on an ordinary PC. Here’s the story.

I was called by a friend who has the following setup: Gateway PC about 4 years old, running 98SE, 128MB RAM, had Office 2000 running OK for years. Now when he executes Word, the splash screen appears, the hourglass shows and the cursor can be moved, but Word never completes initialization. CTL/ALT/DEL brings up what looks like an old-style Win3.1 error box that says “System dangerously low on resources…Winword [not responding]…”. After that, attempts to do anything else give a Kernel32 error, then a bluescreen error and it’s all downhill from there.

The system was scanned with AdAware, latest version & data file, everything found was cleaned. Scandisk, full scrub – showed no problems. All other programs work fine. Norton is current, alive and reports nothing unusual. There are no strange programs in the startup group.

All copies of Word were uninstalled, system rebooted, a clean install from the original Office 2000 disk performed, rebooted, the problem is still there. Rinse, repeat, still there.

Whether I click on any DOC file to execute Word or execute Word first, I get stalled at the same spot. The same DOC files read fine in other computers using the same version of Word.

BTW, this system is on a dialup and was not connected to the Internet or any other computer during the tests. Access, PowerPoint, Excel, all installed as part of the Office package work fine; it’s only Word that won’t execute.

Anybody have any suggestions about what to try next? I hate to reinstall the OpSys unless I have to. The 98 recovery disk supplied by Dell doesn’t have many options and I don’t know if all apps will have to be reinstalled afterwards. That could be a big task.

[ouryL]

@Musicat

I can’t get Word 200 to run even after a clean install on an ordinary PC. Here’s the story.

I was called by a friend who has the following setup: Gateway PC about 4 years old, running 98SE, 128MB RAM, had Office 2000 running OK for years. Now when he executes Word, the splash screen appears, the hourglass shows and the cursor can be moved, but Word never completes initialization. CTL/ALT/DEL brings up what looks like an old-style Win3.1 error box that says “System dangerously low on resources…Winword [not responding]…”. After that, attempts to do anything else give a Kernel32 error, then a bluescreen error and it’s all downhill from there.

The system was scanned with AdAware, latest version & data file, everything found was cleaned. Scandisk, full scrub – showed no problems. All other programs work fine. Norton is current, alive and reports nothing unusual. There are no strange programs in the startup group.

All copies of Word were uninstalled, system rebooted, a clean install from the original Office 2000 disk performed, rebooted, the problem is still there. Rinse, repeat, still there.

Whether I click on any DOC file to execute Word or execute Word first, I get stalled at the same spot. The same DOC files read fine in other computers using the same version of Word.

BTW, this system is on a dialup and was not connected to the Internet or any other computer during the tests. Access, PowerPoint, Excel, all installed as part of the Office package work fine; it’s only Word that won’t execute.

Anybody have any suggestions about what to try next? I hate to reinstall the OpSys unless I have to. The 98 recovery disk supplied by Dell doesn’t have many options and I don’t know if all apps will have to be reinstalled afterwards. That could be a big task.

If it crashed, how can you say it was a clean install? :rolleyes: :dubious:

[Musicat]

@ouryL

If it crashed, how can you say it was a clean install? :rolleyes: :dubious:

Boy, are you helpful. (I would use the :wally wally smiley, but that’s not appropriate for this forum, is it? )

I would define a clean install as one that began with a known good opsys, all previous installs of the same or conflicting app cleared away, and no reported errors during it. Under that definition, this was a textbook case.

[Musicat]

I found the solution. The problem was caused by a bad NORMAL.DOT file.

I deleted the file and Word executes fine now. I checked back in my tech notes and this is what I found. Hope it is useful to others:

Normal.dot basically stores user configuration data (font styles, settings, etc.). It often becomes corrupted thru no fault of the user.

No check is done by Word for validity of Normal.dot, so corruption can cause a multitude of errors, including ones that generate old-style 3.1 boxes. Word does not delete it during uninstall and does not alter it if present during reinstall.

If Normal.dot is not found during program initialization, Word recreates and stores a default copy. So deleting it is safe, at the possible expense of personal configuration data loss. For the users I support, that is no big whoop.