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Morgath

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Cannot browse to files from within Office...Application Hangs

Background: Windows XP Pro (all SP/updates applied) running MS Office 2003 (all SP/updates applied).

Problem: I start Word/Excel etc. Select File -> Open...click the file I want and the application hangs. I have to go into Task Manager and kill it.

If I open a folder in Windows Explorer, I can double click the file and it opens right up. I can also open the "Recent" files from the Task Pane within Office.

Any ideas?
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David-Howard

Have you attempted to uninstall, reboot and reinstall Office?
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ASKER

I have rebooted. I was trying to avoid uninstall/reinstall. Thanks for the response though.
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ASKER

Another problem that could be related. I cannot perform a File/Save As.
Morgath - that definately sounds like some form of corruption with your Office install.

Have you tried running a Repair in office ?

From Control panel, load Add/Remove programs.
Scroll down to Office 2003, and hit the "Change" button.

Run the repair from there and see how it goes ?? Somewhat easier than a re-install, but also less likely to work.

Any reason for avoiding the re-install ? Should only take 10-15 minutes, and it sounds to me you're losing a lot more time than that by either trying to fix it, or working around the problem ;)
I saw this problem once when the computer had a bad mapped drive (no longer existed) see if any of the mapped drives are no longer valid in "my computer" and disconnect if there is one (right click menu).
Hope this helps.
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ASKER

I tried Repair, Reinstall, and finally Uninstall/Install. Nothing corrected the problem. It bothered me that this problem just "popped up" after working for close to a year without incident. I went into Add/Remove programs and noticed that 8 updates were installed yesterday. I uninstalled these updates and...the problem went away! I decided to install these updates 1 at a time and see if I could isolate the update causing me a problem.

It turned out to be Security Update for Windows XP (KB908531) - A security issue has been identified in Windows Explorer that could allow an attacker to compromise your Windows-based system and gain control over it.

I am not excited about not having this patch, but it is causing a problem. Any ideas?

This update came from our WSUS server and no other users on the network are having the problem. Should I try a download directly from the Windows Update site?
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PartyLite

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