Office 2003 with Windows XP SP2

[John Welch]

Hello all,

My company just purchased 20+ PCs all with the same specs: Pentium 4
3.20 GHZ, 512 MB memory, Windows XP SP2, and Office 2003. As we have
begun putting these systems on-line the users are reporting back
performance/speed issues with the Office applications. The biggest
complaints have involved opening and/or saving documents, doing a
Print Preview, and inserting rows in Excel. In some cases the delays
can be counted in minutes rather than seconds. It has gotten to the
point where these users are only half-kiddingly asking for their old
PCs back, and their previous machines were running Windows 98 on a
Pentium III, 866 MHz, with only 128 MB of memory.

We are mostly running Office 2000 at this point, but we do have a few
other machines using Office 2003 with Windows XP SP1 and these systems
do not have the same problems, even on the same documents that are
troublesome on these new PCs. The new kid on the block, and the thing
that we are currently pointing to as the source of the problem is XP
SP2.

I've been "google-ing" around trying to find a solution to this
problem, but thus far have had no luck. The closest I found was a
post on another group back a few months describing a similar situation
with the Print Preview function, but the only responses were to try to
install a new print driver, and another person saying they had the
same issue.

Basically I have a two part question:
1) First and foremost has anybody experienced a similar situation, and
if so and you've solved the problem, what did the trick?

2) We haven't gotten to this point yet, but we are considering
uninstalling SP2. Has anyone gone through this process, and is so,
how painfull was it? Also, considering that these machines came
through with SP2 pre-installed is uninstalling it even an option or do
we have to re-install the OS from scratch.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
John

 

[Mark L. Ferguson]

A slipstreamed SP2 install cannot remove SP2.
I would imagine your slowness with Office file open has to do with the path used by the document storage folders. If some UNC path,
(like //myfriendscomputer/documents/save) is used in the Options of Office, you might be getting some 'TimeOut' for the save to
default back to local path.. Other relic paths might also do that, left over from the upgrade.

 

[John Welch]

Thanks for the reply. We didn't think we would be able to back out
SP2 since it came pre-installed (i.e. no upgrade), but figured it was
worth asking about.

As far as the slowness, we thought it may be a network issue since all
the documents these people are working with are on a file server.
However, we copied one of the files over to a user's hard drive just
for testing purposes and they sitll had the same issues with open,
save, print preview, etc.

I guess I'm a little unclear about your comment on the UNC path.
These users do have a default file location out on the network
somewhere, whether it be referenced with a mapped drive letter or by a
UNC path. Is there something new in SP2 that changed the UNC naming
convention? Also, are you saying if the user had a "bad" location as
their default it could cause slowness even when working on a document
opened from another location (i.e. local hard drive)?

 

[Jim W]

I too have been experiencing the same excruciatingly slow file browsing in
all (and only) Office Pro 2003 apps. I run XP Pro SP2, fully patched from
WU, and whenever I try and open / insert a file in any Office Pro 2003 app
(typically Outlook 2003, Word, or Excel), it takes FOREVER. I have searched
high and low for MONTHS now trying to find the solution: MS KB, TechNet,
and google'd non MS sites, but to no avail.

Dear Lord....A solution would be so appreciated.

Thanks in advance for any possible advice / wisdom.