Hector said:
Can anyone tell me why winword.exe is shown as an active process in
taskmanager, but the program itself is not running. Windword.exe does
not
appear in startup programs when I run msconfig, and I have removed
microsoft
office from startup as well. I can't find anything in startup that
could
relate to winword. I am running Windowsxp home.
Hector
It's an old, old bug that has traversed through several version of
Outlook and Word. Both of those may end up hanging during their exit
process when you exit them and leave behind a remnant stub of code in
memory. This remnant can not only screw up subsequent loads and
behavior of Outlook and Word but can also screw up system operation.
Microsoft never addresses this problem. Their excuse is that it is
caused by an add-on that isn't closing properly, e-mail scanning from
anti-virus software, and anything else they can think of but, of course,
it could be their product screwing up. Even in a pristine install of
Windows followed immediately by an install of only MS Office, this hang
on exit problem still will occur.
Use Task Manager to kill outlook.exe and winword.exe if you find them
still listed as a process (and about 30 seconds has elapsed to let them
close normally, if they close). Give Outlook more time because it may
be compacting or you might be using an add-on, like the Personal Folder
Backup program, which will run when you tell Outlook to close (but the
utility needs to complete its action before Outlook can unload).
