Word & Excel crashing - Need Help

Mad Mike

A couple of months back both Word and Excel became very unstable on my home PC. Once they were both rock stable now they crash all the time both problems appeared at the same time so I suspect there is a general problem with Office on my machine. I think it has something to do with me setting up multiple user accounts on one machine but I don't know. I have tried Microsoft and Google for an answer but I haven't found anything useful. If you know of a good place to search for help then please let me know.

If you feel brave the details of problem are below - any ideas appreciated.

The machine is an Athlon XP2000+ / 768MB Ram running XP home (SP2 ) with SP2) and using AVG Free version 7 antivirus. The machine is used mainly for gaming and I try to keep drivers etc. up to date.

I have Office XP Student educational version - legally licensed.

Word and Excel have worked fine on this machine for the last 2 years and suddenly started crashing. I cannot pin down what exactly caused the change in behaviour but it could be related to one of the following:

1) I set up several user accounts on the machine and tried to run Word and Excel under different usernames - The only change I made was to copy a few shortcuts in the start menus. This is a likely culprit because the problem first ocurred shortly after. Also BIG CLUE - for a time I could run Excel and Word without crashing by logging in under a different username BUT even that has now stopped working and I get crashes no matter who I log in as.

2) Crashes roughly co-incide with me upgrading to SP2. I don't think this is the culprit though because I am sure both programs worked fine after installing SP2.

3) Crashes roughly co-incide to me upgrading AVG to version 7. I don't think this is the culprit because I turned off AVG scanning and crashes still happen.

I tried repairing Office XP from the installation disk - the repair install went fine but the crashes persist.

I reported the fault using the MS fault report tool and it recommended I update I office. I duly downloaded and installed Office XP Service pack 3. No improvement however.

Description of Crashes:

Both programs appear to work normally but crash evertime you try to do certain operations. Also they will crash when I try to open certain documents or spreadsheets. After the crash I get an error message and the program will try and recover - sometimes it successfully recovers the documents at other times I lose the document.

Many operations will cause the crashes but here are some:

Excel: A guaranteed way of getting a crash is to try and insert a chart sheet. Another is to try and change the font colour of a bunch of cells.

Word: A guaranteed way of getting a crash is to try and insert an equation.

Capt'n Midnight

If as you say logging in with another profile worked then it might be profile related. Do the usual stuff first

Delete all references to Normal.DOT (word)

corrupt docs ?
in word - tools - options - save - always create backup (fast save OFF)
disable features not supported in 97
in excel click on the top LHS square to highlight the whole sheet, open a new workbook right click on cell A1 and paste all the cells from the first sheet - save
download open office - and open the offending docs and re-save them
[RANT]in the days of windows 3.11 and office 4.3 this step would have been done in Lotus-123 , microsoft still don't seem to understand thier file formats as well as the competition despite having a decade to catch up- go figure and don't expect a stable version of Excel anytime soon, I'm still seeing it bomb out and needing a reboot just like it used to do on WFW , Excel still doesn't have a global "always save backup copy" like every other spreadsheet app has had for the last two decades , and it certainly isn't stable enough to fly without a parachute[/RANT]

Logon as administrator and run setup again to repair office then try reinstall
if this solves the problem then delete the other user profiles (all settings will be lost forever etc.)

Unistall and reinstall leaves behind so much junk it's just unreal - might do up a post on that someday - that it may/may not work.

Mad Mike

Thanks for the tips.

I don't think the docs are corrupt because I can get a crash on a brand new blank document. Also I have installed Open office (I needed something to allow me to look at my old files) and it opens documents just fine. Good suggestion on the ini files - I'll go and delete them and see what happens.

Capt'n Midnight

Mad Mike wrote:

I don't think the docs are corrupt because I can get a crash on a brand new blank document.

try deleting Normal.dot first.

Mad Mike

This problem really had my head banging against a wall - I was forced to use open office this week to work on some important documents. I'm full of admiration for open office but its taken me 10 years to develop a passably decent relationship with MS office and I really don't want to start all over again.

Anyway today I got furious and sat down determined to sort the problem out. The biggest clue was that creating a new user allowed me to use office for a short while. However re-installing office, deleing all of the profile stuff in documents and settings and even in the registry didn't solve the problem. Finally in desperation I uninstalled a whole load of unused programs from my mahcine and hey presto Office is now working again. Unfortunately I cannot remember exacctly what I un-installed and I have no way of narrowing down the actual culprit. Most of the stuff was pretty innoccuous but there was some old printer driver and graphic driver stuff.

Anyway thanks for the suggestions - now back to fighting with MSoffice.