MSOffice XP on WinXP

Hey all...

Background Info:
Have 5 users (I am one of the users so I have first hand knowledge of the error) running WinXP SP1 (with most of the updates from Windows Update) with MSOffice XP SP1. All users are using MSOutlook 2002 and using Word as their e-mail editor instead of the default editor in Outlook.

Error
All the users got a Winword error when they tried to open an e-mail and had to deselect the Wordmail feature to be able to read e-mail again. Right after that anytime we tried to open a Word document we get another error message...

"Microsoft Word has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience. "

You then get the usual "Please tell Microsoft about this problem ". There is also a link that you can click to see what info is being sent to MS and at the top of this Window it has...

Error signature
AppName: winword.exe
AppVer: 10.0.3416.0
ModName: shell32.dll
ModVer: 6.0.2800.1145
Offset: 0010f42e
_________________________________________

Anyways now to what I have done to try and fix this problem...

- tried repairing MSOffice - no go
- tried uninstalling and reinstalling MSOffice - no go
- tried ungrading MSOffice to SP2 - no go
- searched MSKnowledge base but could not find anything

I then got the idea that it may have been one of the patches that was installed from Windows Update as all 5 of us have the Automatic Update notification turned on. To make sure I decided to do a fresh clean install of everything. After installing WinXP SP1 and MSOffice XP SP1 I started going through the process of installing the patches one at a time...what a pain in the *** that was. Long story short (haha) I found that I had all the patches install except "810847: February 2003, Cumulative Patch for Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1 ". Everybody else installed this patch just after it came out.

The crappy thing about this is that according to Microsoft you cannot uninstall this Cumulative Patch. They do mention an that there was an issue and that MSKB article 813951 would fix it. HAd nothing to do with Word but we tried it anyway...no go.

Sorry for the long post...hopefully someone can help. We are going to contact MS but that in itself is a pain so I'm hoping that the great posters here can help.

Laters,

 

More often than not, the sort of Word error you are experiencing is resolved by doing a seach for a file called "normal.dot" and deleting it. It is the template Word uses for the blank document it always opens with. It will be recreated when Word is started again.

To find that file on XP, you must enable XP's "search for hidden files and folders" by going to Start>Search>More advanced options (towards the bottom in the left-hand pane) and checking "Search hidden files and folders. "

 

Try replacing the shell32.dll file, too. It contains icons and some other, unrelated problems have been solved by using an earlier version (which the one on your CD will be if you have SP1 installed and the original CD). Worth a try.

If C: is your hard drive and D: is your CD-ROM and Windows is your system folder, Run:
expand D:\i386\shell32.dl_ C:\Windows\System32\shell32.dll

If you get any warnings from System File Protection, allow the replacement.

 

Thanks for the replies...I will try out what you have suggested tomorrow and will post back the results.

 

Well here's an update...

NO Go on the Normal.dot
NO Go on replacing the "Shell32.dll" file



Oh well I guess it's time to call Bill Gates and see if he can help. I'll post back what he says...that's if they can help...

Thanks for the suggestions...much appreciated.

 

All fixed

Well here is my final update on this. Success.

Yesterday I happened to be working on one of the PC's and found that the PC was not WinXP SP1. The user though it was and I did not check (ddddooooohhhhh!!!!!). Anyways I upgraded the PC to SP1 and the problem is gone. Since the other 3 PC's in question were SP1 already I reapplied the service pack and now their problem is gone also.

I'm going to assume (I'd better be careful) that the 810847 patch over wrote a file or 2 and re-applying SP1 fixed the problem.

This problem can be marked as solved...

Thanks again...

 

Didn't do the job for me ..

I tried all of the above and none fixed the problem. Is there anything else I could try?

 

Fixed

From another site ... "I recalled the problem beginning after installing a HP-d145 all-in-1 printer on my laptop. I selected another default printer and the problem seems to have disappeared. Recommendation: Install another printer (even if not attached to system or network), set it as the default, and select the real (problem) printer from the dropdown list in the app when needed and attached or actually available. Otherwise, keep the (problem) printer ON and available and the crashing should not occur. "

I did this and it worked for me!