Help! Word, Excel 'Not Responding'

[Paul Bennett]

Hi everyone

I have a problem with Word 2000 and Excel 2000 running under Windows XP
Home. It has just started to happen
recently and is severely disrupting my business!

Everything on my computer is running smoothly EXCEPT these two programs.

Here's what happens: Let's assume I'm opening up a file called "A.DOC"

When I *first* open up A.DOC in Word, it appears to be okay. But as soon as
I do something like "File... Print Preview" or "File... Print Preview"
or "Tools... Options" or ANYTHING that involves the menus, Word FREEZES and
gets stuck!! The dialog boxes stop drawing, the hourglass is sitting there
forever, and when I ALT-TAB back "into" the document all I can see is a
blank window...

The Windows Task Manager (Applications Tab) shows the following (let's
assume I've tried to do a "File... Print Preview"):
- A.DOC is "Not Responding"
- actually, there appear to be THREE Word documents like this: A:1,
A:1, and A:1 (Preview) - I don't know why Word or Windows puts the :1
suffix there !! Sometimes I see three, then briefly it will become two or
even one, and sometimes the status changes to "Running" but then quickly
goes right back to three, and all are "Not Responding"
- the "CPU Usage" is reasonably low (10, 15, maybe 17 percent), apart
from briefly spiking towards 100 percent when I first opened up the file
- On the "Processes Tab" I have revealed all of the columns (handles,
i/o reads, CPU usage, etc.)
but don't really know what to look for

I have tried:
- rebooting (no help)
- uninstalling and reinstalling Office 2000 (went smoothly, but problem
remains)
- a full system virus scan with Norton Antivirus (nothing found)
- defragging my disk (no glitches, but problem still there)
- removing everything from the ALL USERS and PAUL (that's me) "Startup"
folders

Now I'm completely unsure what to do... Hmmm.... what could it be? Perhaps
my registry is damaged? Should I re-install Windows XP, or maybe (gasp!!)
try to pull off my data and REFORMAT the hard disk?!?

Word and Excel are *critically* important to my business. The disruption is
causing me a great deal of grief!

If any of you have any ideas about where the problem may lie I would be
***eternally*** grateful!!

May you all have a great day and a great weekend!

Sincerely,
Paul Bennett

 

[Don Guillett]

You might? try cleaning out the temp folder

 

[PegL]

I don't know if this will help, but there have been
several postings here in the last couple of months where
it seems the anti-virus software is causing Excel (don't
know about Word, but it would seem reasonable) to be
really slow. I haven't had the problem, so I haven't been
following the postings too closely. You might go to
http://groups.google.com/advanced_group_search. The
group would be microsoft.public.excel.* (or word.*). You
might find an answer there.
Good luck--hth.

 

[Nick]

wow...how many more newsgroups do you think your goin' post this message
in....
you need to go to "posting 101" class...

 

[Gina]

For Word I would try renaming the NORMAL.DOT to
NORMAL.OLD, cleaning out your TEMP directory and
restarting your machine then resarting Word.

Is it the same problem in Excel?

Gina

 

[Norman Harker]

Hi!

Your "Posting 101 class" might be substituted with referral to:

Chip Pearson:
http://www.cpearson.com/excel/newposte.htm
Dave McRitchie:
http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/posting.htm

But welcome Paul!

--
Regards
Norman Harker MVP (Excel)
Sydney, Australia
(e-mail address removed)
Excel and Word Function Lists (Classifications, Syntax and Arguments)
available free to good homes.