Plug and Play process makes word hang for 10 minutes.

After much troubleshooting I have come to the following dilemma.

Upon launching Microsoft Word, the Word program becomes unresponsive for approximately ten minutes. During this period, the Word application is listed in the task manager twice with duplicate descriptions. The Word application can not be End Tasked. After about ten minutes, the cursor will start blinking and the application works fine. I have concluded that there must be a service which is causing this to occurr because Word works fine in Safe Mode which has a limited set of services running.

After a long period of experimentations, I concluded that the "plug and play" service has an effect on it. If I set plug and play to disable, I have no problem with Word. I do need "Plug and Play" available though to accommodate a USB printer attached to the PC. Excel is problematic in the same way Word is. Firefox and Internet Explorer dont have any problems running while Word is hung though. Excel also shows two duplicate processes in the task manager.

Anyone ever heard of this? It sounds like Word and or Excel are trying to execute some type of routine when starting, but can not complete it.

Thanks in advance with any suggestions.

 

Is your USB printer powered up when this happens?

Try creating a generic text only printer connected to the FILE: port and setting that as default.

A while back I had similar issues with some beta software and that resolved them PITA to remember to change default printer when you needed to print though.

 

During the troubleshooting period, I uninstalled the printer and unplugged it to rule it out as a possible cause. Without the printer installed or plugged in I had the same issues.

Were you suggesting the Word or Excel were hanging by trying to reference a printer?

Thanks

 

That's the issue we had, if no printer was installed or certain USB printers were the default there were startup problems.

Can't help any more than that I'm afraid, I can't even say what printer it was we've used several over the last few years. In saying that it was either a Lexmark, Epson or HP and given the popularity of those printers and Office it probably isn't the same issue. I just thought it worth looking at as the symptoms were so similar.

 

Thanks for your contribution.

Something else is why does the Word process show up in the task manager as two identical entries?