How do I get the kb918338 and 894472 hotfixes?
Make sure you look carefully at those KB articles before deciding to apply
the fixes. The way to get a hot fix is to call the Microsoft Product
Support as the information in the articles indicates. But first consider
this?
Windows XP stops responding when you try to save a large offline file
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/918338/en-us
This article deals has to deal with offline files. That's not your issue.
Third-party programs that require lots of memory do not run in Windows XP
Service Pack 2
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/894472/en-us
The problem documented in this article is that certain programs requiring a
large amount of memory don't run after SP2 is installed. They throw up an
error message when run such as "Not enough memory", "Out of memory". Again
this is not the problem your experiencing.
If it were me I wouldn't install either of these fixes based on your
description of the problem.
Understand that Andrew E. is our resident troll. He posts nonsense much of
the time, or advice that doesn't apply - which seems to be the case here -
or advice that's dangerous. I would suggest you ignore him.
Sorry but I don't have a solution for you. Does a logoff, logon fix things?
That's not very time consuming. Also have you looked in Task Manager to see
if for some reason excel is still running even though it's not showing the
taskbar? Also you could post to the Excel newsgroup. Someone there might
have had experience with this issue.
You might want to specify the computer configuration, amount of installed
memory, and page file size. Is this the only program you're experiencing
problems with in the Office suite? There are a variety of excel newsgroups
such as:0
microsoft.public.excel
microsoft.public.excel.misc
microsoft.public.excel.setup
List of MS newsgroups on the web:
http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/list/en-us/default.aspx