XP help

May 1, 2006 9:40 AM

Help me look like I know SOMETHING (my boss thinks I'm an ass!). He actually asked my advice. What do you think might be cause??

Excel and Word freeze up when attempting to save. He has to use task manager to get out of program (will say not responding after a few seconds when he tries to save).

posted by beccaj to computers & internet (10 comments total)

My first instinct is to make sure you have adequate (in the case of MS Office read: LOTS) of free disk space.
posted by ChasFile at 9:43 AM on May 1, 2006

Saving to an unresponsive network drive?
posted by GuyZero at 9:43 AM on May 1, 2006

Check out the symptoms described in MS KB918165. I think it may be your boss' problem, as we had quite a few users with similar experiences after the last round of updates. If so, you should be able to fix it by installing the updated patch in Security Bulletin MS06-015.
posted by ecrivain at 9:54 AM on May 1, 2006

This sounds like what happened to me a few days ago - an IT person came through and was stumped also until he ran an update on Office. Unfortunately, I can't tell you exactly HOW he did it, I just know that he checked for updates and installed what was listed, and since then, things have been fine for me.

I believe he updated Office, not Windows, if that makes sense. I'll see if I can get more details for you.
posted by bibbit at 9:55 AM on May 1, 2006

Check disk space, like ChasFile said. You want at least, oh, say 1000mb free, for swap drive space.

Try deleting temporary files, too. Search the computer for folders named "temp" or "tmp" and delete the contents of those folders. That'll clear up space and remove any possible corrupted files.

You could also try checking the disk for errors. If you bring up properties for the c: drive (or whatever local drive he's trying to save to), the check disk tool will be under the tools tab. Have it fix any errors.

Good luck. Maybe now you can be a helpful ass.
posted by Jonasio at 9:59 AM on May 1, 2006

If you have HP printers, definitely check out ecrivain's answer. I was going crazy til I finally found that article.
posted by jasper411 at 10:09 AM on May 1, 2006

bibbit is thinking of the Office Update website.
posted by evariste at 10:54 AM on May 1, 2006

Yes, as evariste said, the Office Update. From my IT person:

"I reinstalled the Office Suite from the original medium. You might suggest to visit this site: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/officeupdate/default.aspx and run whatever updates are available. I hope that helps!"

This fixed my problem: every time I tried to save to a shared drive in MS Office (Word, Excel, Outlook), the computer froze and I had to manually exit out of the program. I couldn't do things like mail merges, either, because it meant trying to open a shared drive file from within Word. I could open and save files if I opened them from the desktop, but I couldn't do a "Save As" once in the file or the program would freeze.

Once the fix above was done, everything worked perfectly. I don't think I even had to restart!
posted by bibbit at 11:23 AM on May 1, 2006

You might find something in the Event Logs (assuming it's Windows 2000/XP) in the application section (look for anything with a red cross next to it, this indicates an error message).

Go to: Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Event Log. In the left hand pane, select Applications and if the right hand pane has any red crosses next to some line items, feel free to post them here (assuming that they occur at roughly the same time as the save action in the Office applications) and try to remove any questionable (or personal) information in the paste prior to posting.

Also, I have seen this happen with the alternate input hooks in Office. Here's instructions on how to remove them but I would recommend updating your Office installation first. Visit the official Office site and select the Downloads link on the left hand side. This will allow you to install the office update application which will check the installation and detect any updates that have to be applied (follow the instructions once you hit the Check for updates option).
posted by purephase at 11:30 AM on May 1, 2006

Thanks everybody

I let him know what my "friend" thought it was (that's you guys!) and he finally just confirmed and fixed via help desk in India and said "thanks" to me...

Thank You-
posted by beccaj at 12:13 PM on May 1, 2006