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

 

[sharyn]

We've given up and moved to Office XP which runs great on win2k and WinXP but not so hot on win98.

Sharyn

 

[SgtPepps]

looks like were going to upgrade to Office 2000 on all win2k PCs. MS wins again!

Regards

Mike

 

[Spirit]

Well guys here come a great big SPANNER..

We're Running Win2k & Office XP and a few of my clients have this problem, click Word, Excel or Outlook 2 to 3 minutes later it'll load. Click it again and bang its there loaded practically instantly! These machines are BEASTS running 2Ghz+, over 500Mb ram and happens whether connected to the network or not)

Going to try the above and see what happens. (Upgrade to SP3, Patch Office try journaling etc.) Will post back with the results.

For all you admin's out there this isn't User maddness this is real.

Iain

 

[score99]

Try re-installing Office 97 and apply SR2b, it should work just fine...(you might have to do this a couple time before the problem will finally go away...)

Make sure you are installing under the user name (not under administrator)

It has nothing to do with AntiVirus or other preloaded apps, strictly between W2K and Office 97, (I had it installed from scratch with just those 2 apps and the problem(s) arised....)

 

[tahoe2]

you might try to install the compatws security template. That one reverts security back to the W98 level. Other than that, you could try right clicking on the app, choose properties, and then choose the option that lets you run it under the guise of W98, etc. for me it turned out to be a video issue, which was resolved both of these ways.
Good luck!

Corie

 

[GoofMan]

My guess is that this relates to the JET database. I am a Dell shop with 25+ users. The only time I have problems is when I set up a user with Win2K sp3. My Win2k sp2 boxes do not seem to have this same problem. I cannot find anything on MSDN regarding this issue. Seems Microsoft is not inclined to admit this problem even exists.

The problem happens to my personal machine regularly. If I log off then back on it is usually resolved, but that is not the best answer. I believe Win2K has problems reading the JET DB. The is the main thread that connects the entire Office suite, and is present in Office 97, 2000, and XP.

 

[bludbunny]

I have found in all cases that Office 97 pro runs flawlessly on win 2K pro by disabling the Office Start Up. (under START, PROGRAMS, STARTUP - delete Office Start Up (It think it's called))

Or, try this little test:

When you run word (or excel or whatever) and it takes a long time to open (ie. you think the computers frozen up) Do a CTRL-ALT-DLT - TASK MANAGER - end process OSA.exe

Everything should work fine. This is why I disable the Office Start up on all my win 2k Pro pc's.

Hope this helps someone.

Brett

 

[SamuelBiddulph]

Probably repeating things with my comment but there is a small utility (eraser97 i think it's called) that microsoft provide that fully removes all the remaining registy/program enteries for Office97 if you remove it. The thing i can suggest is to remove office97, reboot, run the utility, reboot and then re-install.

 

[GoofMan]

I have read several posting groups regarding this issue. A common thread is to disable "Office Startup" AND "Find Fast". i.e. remove them from the Startup folder. So I appreciate the advice from both. Before eliminating Office 97 from all computers, cleaning the registry, then reinstaling, I think I will try the simple fix first.

Find Fast is an optional indexing service for Office 97 that, apparantly, sometimes gets hung. The lack of response from this service serves as a drag on all of the applications in the office suite. The index, as I understand, provides a b-tree lookup for the JET database that, in theory, speeds the responsivness of the Office 97 suite. However, when the Find Fast index corrupts, the result is dramatically the opposite.

Hope this works, and helps others in the future. I will re-post if removing the two applications does not cure the problem.

 

[jysorensen]

I've been having this problem and I am SO glad I'm not the only one! We have Compaq computers and we're running Office 97 - SR1 with Windows 2000 - SP3. We've also found that the logging off and back on works. However, it is a pain to do this every morning and people are complaining about it. I don't think it's an anti-virus thing because we're running Computer Associates and we're having the problem. It's also annoying that it just goes away and comes back months later. If we could upgrade Office, it'd be great, but as the others stated, management is TIGHT!

If anyone comes up with a solution, PLEASE post! It's driving me nuts!

Thanks
Julie

 

[GoofMan]

I have not had any more problems since I removed Office startup and Findfast from the startup menu folder.

 

[mezaroonie]

It works!


Thank you so much for your posts Burchill and Goofman, I have been having the same problem and ending the task osa.exe and findfast.exe in task manager and deleting findfast and office startup from the start up folder works!

Thanks again

 

[LambertH]

One last thing. You might want to disable the journal system in Office. You do that from Tools/Options in Outlook.