October 12, 2008 02:03am pdt

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	[x] Attachment Details

Normal.dot keeps causing Word to crash

[x]

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8.8

Zone: Microsoft Word

Tags: Microsoft, Word, 2003

I have a frustrating problem with MS Word 2003 on a Dell Dimension 9150, Pentium D 3.20GHz with 3.50GB of RAM and 465 GB hard drive with 309 GB spare.

Starting mid last year Word 2003 (only) became unreliable and would crash regularly when any one of these three situations occurred:

1. If I used the File, SaveAll command (which you can add to the File menu)

2. Whenever I closed the program

3. Whenever the program was left idle with files open, it would crash after about 10 minutes.

Ive tried seemingly everything. I tried System Restore and it helped for a while but later the problem returned. I tried System Restore again and again but each time the trouble-free period became shorter.

Microsoft had me recreate my Profile, which caused much pain (and copying of huge video files!) and solved the problem for a while, but it returned.

I tried deleting the Normal.dot template, which worked for a while but the problem returned.

I uninstalled Office, reinstalled Office and, you guessed it, the problem returned.

I did the Word 'Detect and Repair' but the problems remained.

Eventually Dell sent somebody to wipe the hard drive and reinstall my OEM disk Windows XP Media Center 2005 (update rollup 2) in January, and reinstall Office 2003. Life has been wonderful ever since until today the three problems returned!

I rang Dell and they basically said I had to follow the same steps to eliminate potential reasons. Rather frustrating, because I now realise that nothing has really solved it yet.

I noticed when Word fails on closing, the last thing that appears at the lower left of the screen is an indication that Word is saving Normal.dot So I renamed my Normal.dot so that Word would create a new one (as I had done a long time ago) and again this solved the problem, for now!

It occurs to me that 3 failure scenarios have one thing in common..... clicking SaveAll, closing the program and even leaving the program idle (so that AutoRecover save occurs) all probably involve a saving of the Normal.dot?

So I wonder why saving Normal.dot keeps causing crashes, that is why Normal.dot keeps getting corrupted even after I rename and recreate it?

Thank you for any advice.

	#	Title
	1	Normal.dot corruption
	2	Normal.dot problem with MS word 2…
	3	Normal.dot
	4	>Is there a backup of Normal.Dot any…
	5	Extract Autotext from Normal.dot
	6	No Normal.dot