J.J. said:
One of my users all of a sudden is having a problem with
Excel starting. The OS is win98 and Excel is Office 2000
SR-1. This user has been working fine for many months, no
problems. Now Excel will not start. I have tried doing a
repair from the Office disc- did not work. Tried
reinstalling- did not work. Uninstalled, then did a clean
install- did not work. All of the other Office components
work fine. Scanned for viruses and has all of the Windows
updates. When trying to open the program, it just
hangs/freezes. If able to crtl-alt-del, system complains
of dangerously low resources- but it's the only thing
running. Any ideas?
In addition to Chip's recommendations, since this is Win98, do the
following to free system resources:
1. Delete contents of C:\Window\Temp. One or two files might be in use
and cannot be deleted, work around them and get the rest. (Chip's site
recommends this).
2. From Internet Options, delete temporary internet files, and check the
box Delete Offline content.
3. Remove files, folders, and user icons from the desktop. Never store
files, folders, and many icons on the desktop.
4. Terminate screensaver, and remove desktop wallpaper.
5. If you commonly store files at C:\ (the root of the C: drive), move
all user files (not system files) to folders somewhere else, My
Documents is a good place.
6. Reduce display colors to 16bit.
7. If you have hundreds of fonts installed, cull those down to perhaps
50.
8. In Excel, try to run with 100% zoom. Some video adapters and Excel
in Win9x do not play well at any other zoom levels. (see also 15)
9. Use only one font family in Excel, i.e., only Arial, Time New Roman,
etc.
10. When making global worksheet changes, i.e., changing the font size
on all of a sheet, do not use the "select all" box at the row/column
intersection or Control-A, but select the active area of the sheet only,
then make the changes.
11. Start/Run command/type:msconfig...[enter]. Select the startup tab.
Find the file osa.exe, and uncheck the box. This is the Office Startup
Application that is installed by default to enhance startup of Office
applications. IMO, YMMV, this is useless, has no tangible benefits, and
consumes resources unnecessarily.
12. The Office Bar (or whatever that is called) is also useless and
consumes resources unnecessarily. There is nothing that this does that
cannot be done from the Start Menu. Deinstall using the Office
installer.
13. Defragment the HD. Many Win9x users have *never* defragged their
HD. Win9x benefits greatly from an occasional defrag. It will take
hours if it has never been done. This is not a resource problem, but
Office runs much better in a defragged HD.
Excel is a Win9x resource hog of the worst sort and is typically the
first/only application to have resource problems. In extreme cases, I
have found that
14. Turn off the active desktop
15. If all else fails (deleting the toolbar file, for example) with the
"Fatal exception at 017F:BFF9DFFF" error, reinstall video driver.
Q
