# MS Word keeps freezing up, driving me nuts!



## Wayne A. Pflughaupt

Ever since I upgaded the hard drive in my Compaq laptop, I've had problems with Word freezing up on me. Sometimes it's just for a few seconds, sometimes for a few minutes. Occasionally it'll freeze up everything else I'm running as well, and won't respond to a "turn off computer" command, so I have to do a hard reboot.

It seems to be worse when I have Outlook and Yahoo Messenger open, and I've seen it "unfreeze" when I shut down Yahoo. Thought I was on to something there, but it will still freeze up on me at work, when I have nothing else open and no internet service or connection.

We've downloaded all the patches for this computer to no avail. Is there some bug with the new hard drive? Anyone have any ideas?

Regards,
Wayne


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## Sonnie

Throw it up against the wall... that has always worked for me. Every time I have done that I have ended up with a working computer... a brand new one. :huh:


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## Harpmaker

Hi Wayne,

I notice that you changed the drive back in March, so that begs the question is this a new problem or have you had it since the drive swap?

If it's a new problem, what's changed on the laptop? Any new hardware or software?

Even if the laptop is used plugged into 110VAC, is the battery still in good shape? Just for grins, try removing the battery from the laptop and try using it that way. I know this sounds weird, but a friend of mine had a similar problem and it turned out to be his laptop was getting confused when it checked to see if the battery needed charging and the battery was totally dead.

The other things it could be is that DMA is somehow not active for the drive (I think Windows is supposed to set this automatically), or even more likely, a power-conservation setting, either on the drive or the PC, is not working like it should. I would turn all the power-conservation settings off and see if that fixes the problem.

On another laptop problem post someone (sorry I don't remember who) mentioned that if you have a stick of RAM going bad it can give problems like this.


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## Mike P.

Wayne, give this a read. If it's a corrupt file within Word that's causing the problem, it's fairly easy to fix. Worst case scenario is you'll have to uninstall Word and reinstall it.

http://personal-computer-tutor.com/NNTWord.htm


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## Harpmaker

Yet another reason why I still use WordPerfect.:bigsmile:


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## Wayne A. Pflughaupt

Harpmaker said:


> Hi Wayne,
> 
> I notice that you changed the drive back in March, so that begs the question is this a new problem or have you had it since the drive swap?
> 
> If it's a new problem, what's changed on the laptop? Any new hardware or software?


Hi Harpmaker,

Yeah, it pretty much appeared after I changed the hard drive. I have added some new software for malware and spyware, but I was having the problem before they were added; they haven't had an effect, and they have to be manually launched.

As far as the other stuff you mentioned, I'll look into it when I get a chance, but it seems like it would all have a global effect, not just with Word...?



Mike P. said:


> Wayne, give this a read. If it's a corrupt file within Word that's causing the problem, it's fairly easy to fix. Worst case scenario is you'll have to uninstall Word and reinstall it.
> 
> http://personal-computer-tutor.com/NNTWord.htm


Hey Mike,

Thanks for the tip. I'll definitely check it out. :T

Regards,
Wayne


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## tenzip

Wayne, you might try installing OpenOffice to see what you think. Compatible with MS Office file formats, and I've been using it for years with very few issues. Download from OpenOffice.org. While it's compatible, it is not Word, and some things are a bit different, but it looks/works very much the same, as do the spreadsheet and presentation software.

I don't know what your issue with Word might be, what version are you using, exactly?

As Mike said, you might try reinstalling or repairing your installation to see if that corrects the issue. Going to add/remove programs and picking MS Office will give you the options to remove, repair or reinstall. You'll need the media.

I originally found O when an engineer at my former place of employment had his Master's thesis stop opening in Word. Word would only say the file was corrupt, and the only copy he had was on the hard drive of his PC. He was having a conniption, called me at home, (he was doing schoolwork after hours), but I did some research, downloaded O, and was able to open the 'corrupt' file, save the file with a new name, and he could open it again with Word. A few formatting issues, but he didn't lose all that work. I smacked him upside the head for not storing it on the network where we could have restored from backup, and went home and back to bed.

Best part is it's free, and there's even a version that will run off your flash drive, so you can take it with you anywhere.


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## Harpmaker

Sorry Wayne, I thought the problem was system-wide, just worse with Word. It sounds like Mike's suggestion might be your best bet.

I understand learning a word processor program and wanting to stay with it; like I quipped before, I still prefer to use WordPerfect (although the new X3 version sucks).

I try to stay away from MS products because they are truly "mysteryware", you never know what they are doing behind the scenes.

OpenOffice might be a good alternate WP for you. I should check it out again myself; the last time I looked at it (I think it was version 2) it was kind of slow and a bit bloated for just wanting to use the WP section. It sounds like this has changed.

I tried a free WP program called AbiWord that is quite nice.


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## Wayne A. Pflughaupt

Thanks for the tips, everyone. I'll try them out after work slows down a bit, hopefully in the next few weeks. I'll report back.

Regards,
Wayne


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## thxgoon

After just completing a 20 page report I feel your pain :R. Makes me wonder how these people from Redmond made it this far. IMHO their products are definitely the least productive in the industry, but we are stuck with them.


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## Wayne A. Pflughaupt

Well, we kind of got a "side-step" fix for the problem. My wife got me Office 2007 for Christmas - end of problem. So, out with the "mysteryware" Office 97, and I'm livin' happily ever after! ("Mysteryware" - I love that one, Don!)

Regards,.
Wayne


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