MS word & wordpad crash
 

Since yesterday both my microsoft word AND wordpad (the standard thing in Windows) crash when I start them up. An access violation occurs (null pointer).
I've tried several things today to solve the problem:

- repair office
- reinstall office
- Upgrade office 97 to office XP
- copy wordpad.exe from another OS
- did a virus scan
- did a disk scan

None of this helped. I searched google for a possible solution, but I found nothing.

Before I resort to doing an OS repair (Windows 2000 Server), what else could I try to fix this?

Problem probably located:

I have found a description of my problem here: http://bizforums.itrc.hp.com/cm/Ques...7a778c,00.html

Three posts down it tells that his is probably a macro problem. So, I renamed all files named "normal.dot" to "normal_.dot", and guess what. Wordpad runs fine again.

Going to reinstall office now, and see if the problem arises there.

[edit]
Office XP installed, no problems... new "normal.dot" files have been placed.
:up:
[/edit]

it is an MS product feature.

damned product features...

It happened again today. So I deleted the normal.dot files again. But for some reason it didn't react to that. I read that page where I got the macro solution and re-enabled my network card, which was disabled because my brother has been naughty and he isn't allowed to interweb.
So, I enabled my card, started my word, and guess what..... no problem..... it ran just fine.
So, this whole thing is connected to my network card.
If MS decides to pull any more of these funnies (or product features) on me they better document it in a place where I can easilly find it!

if your default printer is a networked HP then the host computer must be on and connected otherwise it goes crashy.

:mad:

my brother indeed has a HP.... I shall look for a fix.

its drivers. i live with it.

I didn't find a real fix for this, but I did find a work around. I added a dummy-printer in my printers dialog, and set is as default. Instead of Word looking on the network for the printer, it uses the dummy printer.

:)

I can't help but smile that the fix for a crashing word processor involves messing about with networks.

Ah, where would we be without windows to brighten up our days?

:)