Illegal Operation in Word

[Angela61299]

Hi. I have a user who is getting an illegal operation in Word every time she tries to open any of her saved Word documents. I am able to open these documents on my PC without a problem. She can use Excel without a problem and can create new Word documents and save them successfully, but she cannot use any of her existing documents. I have Uninstalled Office, ran the Office cleaner (Eraser2K.exe), renamed Normal.dot then reinstalled with the same result. I have also scanned for viruses with no viruses encountered. Does anyone have any more suggestions? Thanks!!!

 

[Shecky919]

If the Illega Operation details reveal Invalid PAge Faults, Odds are that there is a Memory Issue with the machine. Is it running Win 98,2k, XP? Which version of office? How much memory does the machine have?

 

[Angela61299]

Thanks for the reply. The user has Windows 95 with 64 MB of memory and Office 2000 SR1. We have been attempting to open her files after a reboot while nothing else is open. Here is the exact error:

WINWORD caused an invalid page fault in
module WINWORD.EXE at 0157:300b175f.
Registers:
EAX=307b57af CS=0157 EIP=300b175f EFLGS=00010202
EBX=00000000 SS=015f ESP=0062c124 EBP=0062c1a8
ECX=00000004 DS=015f ESI=307b57c8 FS=1ad7
EDX=00000000 ES=015f EDI=00000000 GS=0000
Bytes at CS:EIP:
0f bf 4f 36 a8 01 89 0d 1c 58 7b 30 0f 85 40 b9
Stack dump:
0062c1ec 0062c1ec 00001000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000001 00772f3c 00000000 00000000 00000000 00772368 00002fd0

If this is memory related, is there anything I can do? Thanks.

Angela

 

[Shecky919]

Yeah, I've run into this sort of thing before. The best bet is to get new memory for the machine (this has worked for me most of the time) since memory is inexpensive. The other thing is find out if the machine is able to be upgraded to Win2k or XP (of course more memory is needed for these). I would just start by changing out the memory.

 

[cheerio]

Before making any other changes I would locate all copies of normal.dot and rename to normal.old (Word should not be open).

Word will rebuild normal.dot which may be corrupt. If this does not solve the problem you can rename back and be where you were.

 

[Angela61299]

I have already renamed normal.dot. It didn't help, but thanks anyway.

 

[pweegar]

You might want to uninstall Office again then go in to the registry and manually delete every reference to word and office you can find. I have found this to be helpful in the past, as Office leaves it's foot print all over the registry.

 

[cheerio]

There are other software based causes. eg see MS Knowledge Base 141218 and 220714 as examples.

Also take a good look at MSKB 236319 which is a trouble shooting guide to invalid page faults.

I don't disagree that it could be a hardware problem but I would be suspicious if Word is the only application to suffer.

 

[Dreamboat]

Angela: I agree that going and putting more RAM into an already *really too old* PC is not the answer.

First, follow the steps here:

http://www.theofficeexperts.com/cleanyourpc.htm

If that doesn't work, then do the Word troubleshooting (repeating steps you may have done before) I describe at:

http://www.theofficeexperts.com/word.htm

Anne Troy
Way cool stuff:

http://www.cafeshops.com/OfficeExperts

 

[Angela61299]

Thanks for all of the replies. I have tried everything suggested here except changing out the memory (I did have her reseat it though). This PC is actually located in a different location than mine so I have been doing all troubleshooting via remote control. I have still had no luck so the user is shipping the PC to me and I will try swapping memory and if that doesn't work, I will format and reload!

 

[Angela61299]

Okay, now I am totally stumped! I sent her a completely different PC and she is having the same problem! She can go to other PCs in her office and open the files fine, but on her old PC and the new one I sent her, she gets the illegal operation. It seemed to me it had to be her network connection, but I had her plug the PC in at another desk and it did the same thing. What in the world can be the problem? Thanks!

 

[carrr]

Are you by chance running Norton AV? This happens from time to time due to Norton. See instructions here:

http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPOR...67ac0063608c/2efb6ccf3c61c14c852567ee0058f96a

 

[Angela61299]

No, we are running Cheyenne Antivirus ~ thanks for trying though!

 

[Angela61299]

Just in case anyone is interested, I found out that the cause of this problem was her default printer. I deleted the printer and reinstalled it and it works fine now. Thanks for all of the suggestions.