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MshineFlag for United States of America

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Office 2003 Word and Excel Slow to load

Ok.. I have searched all over the web and EE for an answer and tried many suggestions. Maybe
I missed one or two, and I'm hoping someone will have an answer.

My wifes Corporate Laptop has Office 2003 installed. Word, Excel, Power Point, Outlook bundle.
When opened from the Start/Programs menu all open quick and nicely. Once open if you navigate
from the File/Open menu it will open documents just fine. BUT.. If I try to open a WORD or Excel
document, by double clicking the actual file, it takes approximately 1-2 minutes fo rthe file to
open.. It first loads Word or Excel after about a minute of thinking, then takes almost as long
to actually display the file in the application.

Both Powerpoint and Outlook work completely fine opening files either way.

Through my searches I found the following suggestions, all which did not help:
1. Delete the Normal.DOT files from the users Application Data/Microsoft/templates folder.
2. Delete the Word and Excel folders from the users profile Application Data/Microsoft folder.
3. Removed all Network printers not connected to the laptop or detectable from our home.
4. Ran the Detect & Repair option from the Help menu in Office Excel.
5. Defragmented the HD.

Her machine is fairly new, running XPpro and plenty of processing power and memory (1 GB).
Everything was working fine and then started having problems a few weeks ago.

She does not run updates, everything is administered.configured by the IT Admin who set
up the machine.

One thing I was not able to try was to remove Norton Antivirus, because I think corporate
would not be too happy. Frankly, I think Norton is a piece of crap and would NEVER install
it on any of my machines. The other solution, is not really an option as of yet either, which
is to reinstall OFFICE 2003 from scratch. I believe this machine is a ghosted machine, and we
do not have access to the Installation disks.

Any more solution suggestions would be greatly appreciated, and I will continue to
plug away on the web looking for an answer.

Regards,
Mike
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David-Howard

First, I completely agree with the Norton comment. :-)
I'm about to head out for the day and may have missed it in your post, but have you uninstalled and reinstalled Office? I don't know if this is an option for you or not. Does this issue occur under any other log in? Is it possible for you to recreate her profile if so?
David
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I wish I had the installation disks, but I do not. The whole machine was probably ghosted from
some general template.

This is a laptop given to her by corporate. It's one of those nightmare situations where they
have the thing locked down with a bunch of crap, and control by a GPO, because she connects
via VPN to some privacy sensitive documents and data.

I do not want to mess with profiles, because I am sure there are some
security rights and settings, keys, whatever, related to the VPN Authentication BlahBlah and
I do not want to screw that up for her.

Why will Word and Excel start up quickly from START > PROGRAMS link, and then if I go to
File > Open and navigate to the file it fires right up, but trying to start it from the actual file
icon takes minutes to open? That is the BIG puzzler here.

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Shanmuga Sundaram D
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I have that same situation with Norton and Office 2003, Norton tries to scan every app and every file that opens from that app suite. Norton is still pretty darn good for virus protection, especially if you connect to the internet with that machine.
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Shasunder:

I have already read many of those articles I believe, but will review again.

Some answers:
1. Have tried clening the registry, computer is fairly new (less than 6 months), and I want
to avoid the registry as much as possible.

2 & 3 I read about starting in safe mode, but totally forgot to check this one out!!! Thanks for the
reminder! Will look into this.

4. Norton - All updates have been applied, and I cannot access any type of exclusion settings
for NAV. It has been locked down by IT Local GPO.

5. Yes all MS updates have been applied, even MS Office updates.

6. Acrobat Pro = No, Reader is installed and No Print to PDF printers have been installed.
I also made sure no network printers are installed.

8 & 9 No major macros or calculations in the Excel or Word Documents. I can create a simple
Word document, with one line of text, and it takes just as long to load as a full blown presentation
documents with images, etc..

Not sure if it is Norton scanning, because if I open Word from the program files menu
it opens quickly, and then open the file through FILE>OPEN it opens qucikly. Does Norton
only scan it you open files by double clicking them?

*********QUESTION:
Selective Startup is running, only because I disabled some uneccessary items. Nothing
related to printing, networks, or Office. I was affraid to set to Normal, because I thought
I might screw something up? If I switch to Normal, can I go back to Selective with the current settings?
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In addition:

I'm not sure the safe mode option will help, because if I go to START>RUN and type in
Excel /s or Winword /s it will be starting up the file the same as if I started from the
program files menu.. It will be opening the program only without any actual document,
and that I can do already by groing to START>PROGRAMS>Excel 2003 and then have
to manuall navigate to the document directory and open..

I read you could start these programs in safemode by holding down the CTRL key while
clicking the icon. If that is true, that might help.
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I tried holding down the CTRL key and clicking the icon for the word or excel document
but it had not effect.

Another thing I would like to add, which I also read elsewhere..

The weird thing is if I start up Task manager and watch which processes are starting
stopping or running etc.. I click the Document Icon (Word for example), and WINWORD.EXE
does NOT show up in task manager right away? Nothing.. And the only two services active
are my Wireless connection manager processes, which I checked out and they are ok.

Not until I see the Word Application pop up on the desktop , do I see it actually show up in
Task Manager!!

I', wondering if there is a file association problem, somehow? Where it is taking Windows a long
time to figure out what application is to be used when I double click the *.doc files?
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I will try anything at this point!! Nothing else has worked! Thanks.
Not a problem! Let me know if this works for you.
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Well now I am a little hesitant.. I thought this was a MS release, but see it is a 3rd party
cleanup tool..

Of course I read the reviews.. and saw some people have complete system failures after
running the tool.. Not sure what to do.. I only want to fix OFFICE, not run through the whole
system.
In advanced windows care you can run the scan and then it tells you what it finds. For example: It will tell you what missing .dlls and bad registry entries are on your machine. From there you will likely find ones that are MS Office related, and then you can choose what entries you want fixed.

You could have system failures if it "fixes" certain entries im sure, it has never happened to me, but you can use the tool to find what needs to be fixed specifically and not just everything at once.
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AFSCOPS:
Because this is a "Corporate" laptop, I need to explore other avenues other than installing
software that has ANY possability of screwing things up. She is not suppose to install
anything unless approved by Corporate first.

rbbalchtech:
Easyshare is not installed on this laptop. There are however many other apps starting up
with this computer, many related to VPN and wireless connectivity. I will see if shutting
them down has any effect.

Thanks for the suggestions guys.

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Lloyd.. You may have hit upon something for me!! I think she was using a Verizon
Aircard for inet service, before it was cancelled. She no longer uses this card so
I will check to make sure the service and drivers were removed!
I think you have a problem with context menu handlers or your computer trying to run WINZIP from a remote location>

You may experience other issues, like a slow right click of the mouse or a slow start button.

If you have problems with a slow right click or start button, let me know and we will begin fixing this issue.  
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Well it wasn't any Verizon Software.. That was removed already.. I will look
into the context menu suggestion.. Thanks
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She does not have WinZip... The laptop is only using the built in WinXP compression tool.
OK, then I guess let's look at context menu handlers. Comment provided by LEEW on that same post.  
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While none of your suggestions where able to assist me with this issue,
they were all good suggestions, and good places to start. I'm sure they will be valuable resource for future searches.

Thank you all for your time and energy.

I split the point to all who offered resources. I think
I was fair.
Nice! I've been pulling out my hair over this in weeks now. For me it was the Nokia software. I'm going to reinstall it clean when I need it again, just to test if it might have something to do with updates or something.

Thanx!