Win2k Pro and Office 97

[sharyn]

I've recently had 2 different users call me to tell me about a problem they have been having. Both
users are running win2k pro and office 97. Both have power user permissions.

When they open an office application (0ne was using Word, the other Excel), the app opens very
very slowly, (the Excel person told me it took about 5 mins for the document to open) and once
it's open, no changes can be made..and the cursor won't move.

In one instance, powering off the box and turning it back on helped (warm boot did not), in the
other, the user had to actually turn the machine off and leave it sit for awhile before he could use
his office apps again.

Has anyone seen this??????? I'm thinking Office 97 was just not meant to run on Win2k!
Comments? Suggestions?

Sharyn

 

[dilettante]

It has been awhile since I tried this myself, but I don't remember having this problem with Office 97 and Win2K.

Sorry, not much help I know, but at least I know it worked. Do they have all the SRs installed for Office 97?

 

[drdon]

Something must be wrong with your network. I've been using Office 97 with W2K Pro clients for some time now, and it has been as trouble free as you could expect from Microsoft products to be. Very stable, but wierd things do happen occasionally.. haven't heard of your problem though.

Your users shouldn't need to be in the "power users" group to use Office.. were you having a problem when they were in the "users" group.

Where are the files stored that your users had a hard time with? How big of a network are they on?

Good luck.

Don

 

[sharyn]

It's only 2 machines that are having this problem. These users were never in the regular users group..they are supposed to be in the power users group.

The files they are accessing are on their local harddrive..the network doesn't play into this at all, not to mention they are in two separate physical locations, on two different subnets.

And yes, all the latest and greatest service packs are installed on Office. I thought I heard there was a SP2 for win2k. I'm thinking about installing that on their machines and seeing if that makes a difference.

Sharyn

 

[drdon]

Very strange. I have heard of some problems with SP2 for Office 97, but nothing like that. I only install SP1 now (not as a patch, but as a full product update).

 

[maddogtech]

Let's start from the begging shall we? The software is running slowly because the requests are being held up. Some program, or lack thereof, is bringing your users to a grinding halt.

Proceeding on this assumption... Office 97 loads 1)Fast Find, 2)Office Startup, & 3)MS Office Shortcut Bar (Optional in Office Tools during Installation). 1 & 2 had alway given me performance issues {even in Win 9x). The Shortcut Bar is really unnecessary in W2k for the taskbar serves the same purpose really. My suggestion would removing these from startup, if not already done.

4). You may also play with the Performance Options in the Advanced Tab of System Properties. App Response should be applications and you might set your inital and max page file to about 500MB.

5). Also drdon (above) may be correct, I realize that your network might not seem to be the problem, but if your NIC is not recieving desired response from network... it waits & the CPU wastes cycles. Try disabling your LAN in Nei/Net, Local Area Connection properties "Disable". Try it... it may help (P.S. Reboot for sure, W2k sets up some info. for LAN on boot.)

6). Also it can't hurt to ScanDisk and Defrag. 7). Last suggestion is to disable Office 97 Office Assistant (if not already done).

I really hope this helps. Please post if so. Best of Luck! -md

 

[sharyn]

Thanks Maddog for your response..let me address several issues here in response to your suggestions....

The one machine that is giving the user the most problems is a laptop. He is having problems whether he is connected to the network or using the laptop as a standalone box. We are also talking about a brand new laptop...the machine is only about 4 months old.

Fast Find has been disabled..I do it as standard procedure as I noticed it slows my own machine down terribly. I custom load Office, so the paper clip dude is not even loaded.

The office shortcut bar is loaded..it's standard for all users but I can disable that if nothing else works. I will definately check the performance options, page file etc, but seeing that this is a brand new machine, I wouldnt think that this would be an issue.

Unfortunately, this machine is located in the Virgin Islands and I have to walk the user through all of these things as I am in the U.S. I did go ahead and have the user install SP2 for win2k. I haven't heard from him since he installed it so either he isnt having any more issues, hasn't had time to call me, or has hosed his machine with the SP install.

I appreciate everyone's help on here..I will let you all know what I finally ended up doing..what worked..and what didnt.

This group is great! Thanks again!!!!

Sharyn

 

[sharyn]

Ok..here is an update..

Today, user #3, BRAND new machine, just out of the box, just installed yesterday. Set up identically to both the win2k machines that are having this problem, and the ones that arent.

I was able to witness this first hand myself, and these people aren't exaggerating. After the shortcut to Excel was clicked on, it took at least 2 mins for the splashscreen to come up, then another 3 or 4 for a blank document to load. UNREAL!

Findfast has been disabled, the performance options were ok (didn't change the pagefile), nothing else running in the background. Tried a warm boot, no good. The only thing that seems to correct this is a total cold boot. Hmmm..some conflict that is residing in memory??

I don't know if this makes a difference, but 2 of these machines are Dell Optiplex150, the other is a Dell Latitude laptop. Now I'm beginning to think that perhaps there is a conflict between win2k, office 97 and something Dell loads from the factory.

I'll keep u all posted

 

[Hud434]

Hello Sharyn,
Another possibility would be your anti-virus program settings, but then again cold or warm start should not affect that(?) May be worth to disable then test again.
We have similar problem with MS Project 2000 taking ages to open data. We use Office97 SR1 & 2 with Windows 2000 Professional SP1 on Compaq. If you open System Monitor and watch the memory usage of the process (winproj.exe in our case) you can see the memory size creeping up in chunks of 4 or 8KB every 1 or 2 seconds. Do you have same symptoms?
Your last post was 8th.June so maybe you have resolved now with W2K SP2?
Hope this helps, Regards Phil

 

[sharyn]

Hi Phil,

Thanks for the response. I have not heard back from the person that loaded SP2 on his laptop, or anyone else for that matter, which is why I haven't posted anything new.

Actually, I have tabled the whole thing for now until the next time the problem arises.

I did try disabling the antivirus software and it didn't seem to make a difference once the problem had occured. Matter of fact, the only thing that did fix it (temporarily, Im sure) was turning the machine totally off.

On my list of "things to do" is to contact Dell and see if they have any known issues regarding their pre-installed software, win2k and Office 97.

I didn't check the system processes, unfortunately all the machines that are having this problem are in remote locations which makes any real troubleshooting a bit of a problem.

Let me know if you find out anything more and I'll keep this list posted as well.

Sharyn

 

[YO123]

I'm having exactly the same problem with some of the laptops All Dells models latitude CPIA, CPX, C600.

Installed W2KPro, Office97SR2, McafeeV4.03, acrobat reader4.05

All the laptops are installed exactly the same.

Now the strange thing. Some of the users have the problem for a while and the next weeks I hear no complaints and then, for no reason at all, the problem reoccurs.

Also a strange thing is the user I log on with. When the user logs on in the morning, most of the time he has the problem, but when I log on as Admin onto the network, all seems to work fine. After this, there is no more problem the rest of the day.

I'm now installing W2KSP2 on all the laptops to see wether this solves it or not, but if anyone has the answer, please ..... , because the users are not happy with the long waiting.

YO

 

[sharyn]

This was the same problem I was having..sometimes it happened, sometimes it didnt. Sometimes a cold boot got rid of the problem for weeks and then it all of sudden magically appeared again.

We are biting the bullet and upgrading the problem machines to Office XP which seems (knock on wood) to be running better on the win2k machines then either Office 97 or Office 2000.

Service Pack 2 on one of the machines did not appear to help at all..maybe you'll have better luck!

Sharyn

 

[YO123]

I tried the installation of W2KSP2 and I got only from 1 user out of 10 another complaint, but this was solved by booting.

They have it installed now for a week, so I'm a bit in a waiting position to see the results.

.... to be continued

 

[YO123]

The problems start over.

3 weeks I installed 15 PC's with WK2SP2

Now, the last week more and more users start to complain again about the slow starting of the programs Word, Excell, etc.

The only solution is to shut down and restart the pc and most of the times it works again.

IS THERE NO SOLUTION FROM MS FOR THIS PROBLEM ??????

YO

 

[sharyn]

Hi YO,

Sorry you're still having problems. I have found the only solution is to actually SHUT THE MACHINE OFF..a warm boot doesn't seem to help.

We have ditched Office 97 and are installing Office XP on our new machines. I realize that may not be a solution for you, but that's what we've chosen to do.

Good Luck!
Sharyn

 

[Jroenick]

There is a very similar issue to htis in Powerpoint (I am a powerpoint tecnichian) that is caused by norton antivirus, whether it is disabled or not makes no differece. Search for a file called "officeav.dll" on the affected computers. If it is located, do a start > run and type

regsvr32 /u "c:\program files\navnt\officeav.dll"

If the command is successful, you see the message: &quot;DllUnregisterServer in C:\<path>\OfficeAV.dll succeeded.&quot;
NOTE: If the command is unsuccessful, search the hard disk for the file.
The file might be located in a different folder.

Let me know how it goes.

 

[sharyn]

Hmmm...

You may have something here..these machines came with Norton's pre-installed but I uninstalled it because we use McAfee here.

I will test this out on the one machine that continues to be the &quot;problem child&quot; and get back to you.

Thanks!
Sharyn

 

[PRW2000]

I not convinced the problem is just due to Norton anti virus because i have seen the same problem here with office 97 and win2k and we have never had norton installed on these boxes. I do usualy find however just loging off then login back on solves the problem without having to restart the machine at all!

 

[sharyn]

In my experience with this, logging on and off did not help at all, nor did a warm boot. I actually had to power the box down in order to correct the problem.

Unfortunately (or maybe it's fortunate??) my biggest problem child machine is in a remote location and I have to wait for the user to get back in touch with me to try out Jroenick's solution.

I'm not convinced it's a Norton problem either, however, at this point, I'm willing to give anything a try!

Sharyn

 

[Jroenick]

It also may be a virtual memory issue, other than that, I'm stumped.