System reboot accessing Word, Excel documents

[Fred Marshall]

I'm working on a system that's rebooting itself.
Windows XP Home.
Runs fine until one opens a Word document from inside Word.
Then, immdediate black screen and reboot.

The system has been scanned for parasites using NAV, Ad-Aware SE Personal
and Spybot Search & Destroy 1.4. Nothing is found.

Microsoft Office was removed and re-installed. This seemed to work for a
while until the problem reappeared.

The hard drive passes the IBM/Hitachi tests.

I can't rule out hardware but the operation leading to the reboot says
"software".

Suggestions would be most welcome.

Thanks,

Fred

 

[Fred Marshall]

Automatic reboot is turned off.

 

[Malke]

Automatic reboot is turned off.

Test your RAM. I like Memtest86+ from www.memtest.org. Obviously, you
have to get the program from a working machine. You will either
download the precompiled Windows binary to make a bootable floppy or
the .iso to make a bootable cd. If you want to use the latter, you'll
need to have third-party burning software on the machine where you
download the file - XP's built-in burning capability won't do the job.
In either case, boot with the media you made. The test will run
immediately. Let the test run for an hour or two - unless errors are
seen immediately. If you get any errors, replace the RAM.

Otherwise, post in a newsgroup for MS Word. The experts there may have
seen this behavior before and have a fix.

http://aumha.org/nntp.htm - list of MS newsgroups

Malke