Word won't start... 1

[KeyTech]

Hey,

I have a client who is running Word 2000 on Win98, up till about a couple of days ago, all was working fine. Until the user tried to start Word, and it hung at the splash screen. ctrl alt delete doesnt even respond till about 1min later, and even after that if I try end task it will clear the screen and but stays hung, even ending Exploter.exe does nothing, just clears the screen again.....
Eventually a DOS message (kinda like the Win 3.1 errors) comes up saying that the system is dangerously low on system resources. But it is not. The machine is a P4 with 256megs of RAM. I had the resource manager open when starting Word, and it shows that there is about 85 - 90% of resources FREE in each of the 3 resources. I also tried safe mode, no joy. Word came as OEM with MS Works Suite 2001. I tried re-installing Word, removing then re-installing, removing Works and Word then installing Word on its own but still the same thing...
(I have also tried as Admin or another user)
Sometimes if I launch Word, I get the background of the app, just the title bar and the actual window, but that is all and it is completely grey. Also, it managed to generate a GPF, and I got the first bit of the details before it hung on me and had to do the usual turn off then on again....
here is what I got...

[tt]WinWord caused a General Protection Fauly in Module USER.exe at 000b:000023ld
Registers:
Eax=00005 68c cs=1737 EIP=00023ld EFLGS=00000246
BYTES at CS:EIP
c4 lf 26 8b 07 48 67 8b 49 24 8b 49 24 85 d9 c4 lf 26 89[/tt]......and the rest is missing...

I have a disassembler on my machine, but its no use really as I dont know if its Word or USER.exe that contains the strings..???

Anyone any ideas what to try...???

Thanks for reading!

Jay~

My new Tae Kwon Do website is up and running!!

http://www.airport-tkd.com

~KeyTech

 

[joegz]

When you mentioned starting in Safe Mode I don't know if your meant the PC or Word so my apologies if I am repeating what you have tried already. My first suggestion is to start Word from the RUN line using the /a switch.

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\Winword.exe" /a

This will cause Word to open without loading any of the add-ins or templates including the normal.dot file. If Word starts then the problem is with either an add-in or the normal.dot file.

joegz
"Sometimes you just need to find out what it's not first to figure out what it is."

 

[KeyTech]

Thanks joegz I didn't know of that switch, I will try it out and let you know how I get on!! (Have a feeling its Normal.dot so I will try rename/remove that and see if that might work....) And I can get into safe mode, but can't get into Word in safe mode!!!

Thanks again! Jay~

My new Tae Kwon Do website is up and running!!

http://www.airport-tkd.com

~KeyTech

 

[Hasit]

KeyTech, I wrote an FAQ some time ago on Word startup switches. You can find it here: faq68-1269

One other switch you may want to try (you need SR-1 installed first, which incidentally I didn't see in your problem writeup you had installed (may fix the problem!)) is /q. /q suppresses the splash screen and may help you get to the root of the problem.