Word 2000 SR-1 Crashes on Opening

[ruthedlund]

This has never happened to me before. When I try to open Word (2000 w/ SR 1a patch) it says that it has "performed an illegal operation and will shut down."

This is the exact error message:

WINWORD caused an invalid page fault in
module WINWORD.EXE at 017f:30395c27.
Registers:
EAX=00000666 CS=017f EIP=30395c27 EFLGS=00010202
EBX=03b0e91c SS=0187 ESP=0062e560 EBP=0062e580
ECX=006a7dc4 DS=0187 ESI=0062e59c FS=6f07
EDX=00000206 ES=0187 EDI=0062e5b8 GS=0000
Bytes at CS:EIP:
8b 08 83 79 14 00 0f 85 ad 09 e4 ff 6a 00 50 e8
Stack dump:
00691b58 0062e59c 00000002 0062e5d4 00000000 0062e5f4 3031d247 0062e59c 0062e5f4 3031d288 0062e5b8 03b0e91c 00000000 0358c4cc 0358c444 302011e8

I have tried the repair and reinstall option using my original Office 2000 disks, to no avail. My business is paralyzed without a word processor. I can't think of what steps to do next. Can anyone help me fast?

Desperately,

[grugeon]

Try starting it using the /a switch

Start/Run winword.exe /a

This starts it with out all the settings you have put in Normal.dot and any addins etc.

If this works look in the startup directory and see if there is anything in there which might be causing the problem.

Another possibility is to delete all the files you don't need from your Temp directory, particularly one called, I think something like Recover.doc. These are files left over from crashes and are automatically loaded when Word starts.

[ruthedlund]

Your suggestion does work.

I also uninstalled and reinstalled Office entirely and when I try to open Word through my regular shortcut, it still crashes and burns. I think the problem might be a rogue PDF Maker link. I am wondering if I can just delete my normal.dot and generate a new one.

[grugeon]

You could delete Normal.dot and it will generate a new one. However if you do this you will lose any customizations you have made (changes to toolbars, etc)

I would rename Normal.dot to normal.old and then let it generate the new one. If it loads OK that is the problem. If normal.dot is not the problem you can delete the new one and rename normal.old back to normal.dot. (You have to close Word first)

Otherwise look at what is in your startup folder. There may be Add-ins put there by other programs. Try renaming these in the same way, one by one, and starting word in between without the /a switch. This will identify the problem file. If the problem file relates to an add-in such as PDF you may need to reinstall this.

Like any engineering problem you need to do one change at a time and test. It is a slow process but you end up with a positive identification. There is nothing worse than thinking you have fixed a problem, having it recur, and not being able to remember what you did.

Best of luck!

[ruthedlund]

Renaming normal.dot to normal.old seemed to do the trick. There was nothing in my StartUp folder.

Sacrificing my customizations is a small price to pay for being able to use Word again. I can rebuild the customizations fairly quickly (and, one hopes, avoid the problem that arose before with, probably, PDFMaker).

Thanks very much for the help.

[Phil Rabichow]

Once you rebuild normal.dot, I would suggest making a backup of it. Just make a copy to the same folder & name it normal.bk1. Whenever you're going to do any major customization, make another backup. Folks sometimes laugh but I keep 4-5 backups of normal.dot. I even have a batch file that makes a copy & names it normal.bkt. When (not if) I screw up, I can backtrack.

[ruthedlund]

Thanks, Phil. Wish I'd done this before this most recent incident. I have now discovered that what was "breaking" Word was my use of QuickbooksPro 2000 to generate form collection letters using their built-in Word templates. Hm.

Ruth