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Excel misbehaving with XP Pro

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cjconnor

IS-IT--Management
Jun 4, 2003
24
US
We have 2 computers running XP Pro and Excel 2000. Excel ran fine before on Win 98 and 2000 machines. Now, it denies access, loses files, renames them, etc. and makes life difficult. Has anyone experienced this and do you know what to do? I know this is vague but so is the problem! Thanks.
 
Have you checked for viruses? The symtoms you are listing seem to come from a virus in your PC.
 
Yes. No viruses found. I'm wondering if there is a conflict between Excel 2000 and XP. It definitely acts like a virus, I agree.
 
Are you sharing these files, or are these just from access on the local workstation hard disk drive?
 
As a cross check to antivirus programs - try (Trend Micro). See link in middle of page to free online scan. Try this.

I have found viruses that Norton or McAfee did not catch but were caught this way. Also see if you can make anti-virus diskettes (see Norton or McAfee for details), boot into safe mode, then apply the virus scan via these floppies. This has also helped me catch viruses that escape otherwise.

Next, do system & office updates from Microsoft. If one computer is XP Pro, the other Win 2000 - which causes problems? Can you be more specific?

Are your files highly fragmented (use Diskeeper for example)?

You may have corrupted files. Try exporting them out as CSV (comma separated values) & import them back in.

Do these files have problems on other PC's & Excel?

Dave
 
If you could answer bcastner question, we would be more able to help you. I do have Office 2000 on XP computers and have not run into this problem.

With some applications, I have to add a permission "domain users" on the "Program Files" folder for each client. This is because the apps being used don't sets the permissions properly when installed. Oxford English Dictionary ver. 3.0 is an example.

Let us know.
 
Great advice from all of you. I'll try to answer everyone's questions:

Both PCs are running XP. These files are shared over a Win2000 server; however, the two of us who have the problem are not using the same files. Therefore, after reading the last link from microsoft support that bcastner sent, I think that is definitely the problem. I ran the Trend Micro anti-virus check and it came up clean. The PCs are both current on updates and patches and are regularly degragmented. I do have a problem with the server though in that I cannot run the updates and patches on it. I get access denied messages and no patches will run. That issue has to be resolved before I can fix this current issue. This is not the right forum for that problem, but if you happen to know the answer to that one, I'd appreciate it!! I have full administrative rights. I printed some information bcastner wrote in another thread about unregistering the old control. I haven't done that yet. If that's the answer then I'll try that. You've been so helpful -- all of you. Thanks!
 
SP4 on that Win2k server would help a great deal.

Essentially the workarounds I referred to earlier will get you by. XP SP2 in combination with Win2k /SP4 should complete the job.
 
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