PC Help Please, Please

[gaineso]

I hope someone here can help me out.

I've apparently got a virus of some kind affecting Word.

HP N5270 notebook, P3 700, 128 Ram, 20G HD, WinMe, Office 2000.

Friday, everything worked, Saturday, Word says "Not enough memory or disc space to run word." This happened back on April 11, but on the 12th, it worked. Today is the 12th and it doesn't work.

Everything else on the computer works, including Excel & Powerpoint. Everything except "Restore" which has been erased or deleted up to today.

Downloaded the latest versions of Norton Anti-Virus this morning and ran it twice. No joy.

Almost everything I do and especially for work is in Word. I can't finish my reports or expenses for last week and don't have a clue what I'll do about the coming week.

I'm afraid to copy these files to a floppy and put them on my SO's computer to print. Don't want the same thing to happen to her.

Help please, pretty please.

 

[chych]

Well, do you have enough disk space/ram?

Anyways somethings I would do...

-Hit cntrl+alt+del and kill a bunch of processes (not explorer), then try firing up word... some processes are needed, some are not, and some may be conflicting...
-Update MS Word/Office
-Reinstall Word/Office
-Ditch ME, go back to 98 or up to 2K or XP

It probably isn't a virus... well maybe it is, if you consider windows one

 

[nebuchadnezzar]

check your virtual memory...i'm not sure about ME but in '98 it can be changed

 

[gaineso]

Disc space available is 11 Gig.

System Resources is 17%, but I can't figur out what's taking it.

Word suddenly quit, and everything else still works. Driving me crazy. Short trip.

 

[BeeEss]

Quote:

System Resources is 17%

Yikes! Something is not right...I'm surprised your system is stable at all. Try these things:

Go to Run, then type "regedit" then enter. Click down to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, then Software, then Microsoft, then Windows, then Current Version, then Run. Look at the stuff there and see if there is anything you don't recognize (hardware drivers, etc.) Kill anything you think looks weird.

While NOT connected to the Internet, go to command prompt and type "netstat -an" then enter. Check to see that no ports are open while you are not connected...this will rule out some sort of malicious server running in the background.

chych had a good suggestion with the CTRL-ALT-DEL thing, if you haven't already.

Try starting in Safe Mode and see if you have the same problem. Hold down F8 while booting to select what mode to start up in.

Most of the Word viruses I am familiar with are macro viruses passed by .doc email attachments. I know that a lot of antivirus software will not detect those. Disable Word macros, restart, try that.

Finally, get rid of anything that boots with Windows. Take everything out of your Startup menu that you don't have to have; kill all of the "Start this program when Windows starts" stuff like RealPlayer, Kazaa, and all of that. Download Ad-Aware, run it, kill everything it finds.

Hope this helps!
Peace and free system resources, BeeEss

 

[dcg]

Quote:

Originally posted by BeeEss Go to Run, then type "regedit" then enter. Click down to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, then Software, then Microsoft, then Windows, then Current Version, then Run. Look at the stuff there and see if there is anything you don't recognize (hardware drivers, etc.) Kill anything you think looks weird.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't randomly deleting things in the registry a bit dangerous? Shouldn't he make a backup first?

 

[Hamsterball_Z]

A virus would be the least likely thing to happen, most of the current ones going around are targeted to e-mail anyway. DO NOT GO INTO YOUR REGISTRY IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING!!! You'll kill more than Word doing something like that.

The thing to do is think of anything that you have done recently, deleting anything, moving files, adding new programs, etc. You're trying to identify what changed that might be conflicting with Word. Have you done a diskscan yet? Corruption on the disk might cause odd memory reports. If you do run a diskscan make sure "Automatically fix errors" is checked, it's not going to do you much good to find out there are errors if they don't get fixed. You could always reinstall Office, you won't lose anything. Start the Office setup and choose the "reinstall" button, it'll rerun the installation with the same options used when it was first installed.

(HBZ)

 

[pedxing]

I checked the knowledge base from Microsoft's support web site. I had this problem when I was fixing my parent's computer and memory problems can lead to corrupted files on the drive, leading to improper behavior of certain MS Office applications. See if the link below can help you solve your problems:

http://support.microsoft.com/search/...;en-us;Q305498

Good luck and hope this fixes your problem.

 

[dhwilkin]

Don't mess w/ the registry if you don't know what you're doing, or you'll likely end up w/ even more problems. First thing I'd do is reboot. The bring up the Task Manager, see if anything is running that shouldn't be. If so, kill it and open up the System Configuration Utility from the System Information program. Uncheck any programs that are on the startup list that shouldn't be there. Next, run Scandisk, make sure no sectors are corrupt. If Word is still acting up, uninstall and reinstall it.

 

[Flasken]

you might have some spyware programs running on your computer. Those could be the reason for your lack of system resources. Try downloading adaware from www.lavasoftusa.com. To surprise me you will need to find 100 or more spyware programs running on your system. Terminate them and feel good about it.

 

[Audio-Me]

Wholey crap you must have a pile o **** of lame ass software and/or features enabled (sad that it's mostly default). All I'm going to say is, reformat to win2kpro with NTFS file system, and learn to maintain your system! http://www.tweak3d.net/tweak/

 

[BeeEss]

Quote:

Wholey crap you must have a pile o **** of lame ass software and/or features enabled

That is why I suggested deleting from that specific registry key--probably 90% of all of the programs that start when windows boots are located in that key. Personally, I have never killed anything in there that caused any system problems. It is a good idea to make a backup though. Sorry for not suggesting that.

I just figured that low system resources were likely due to having all of the little "free" utils running in the background when you don't need them...WinAmp, RealOne Player (this one is AWFUL), Morpheus, KaZaa, Windows Media Player, Quicktime, just about any instant messenger program, antivirus software...all of this stuff has the potential to start up and run in the background on bootup and usually configures to do so on a default installation. Instead of putting the startup shortcuts in the Startup folder on the Start menu, they put shortcuts to them in the registry where the average joe has no clue how to disable them. Startup times get slower and slower and slower....

Anyway, that's what I meant with the registry thing. Sorry if I caused you any confusion. I would suggest this, however: if you are going to reinstall Word, completely uninstall it first, then reboot, then install it again. Microsoft software has a tendency to not really change much on a reinstall...if you have ever reinstalled Windows in order to fix a problem only to find the comptuer doing the exact same thing as before you started, you know what I mean

Hope you get it working. If you followed my advice and I screwed something up for you, tell me and I will do as much as I can to help you out.

--BeeEss

 

[Pierre Lambion]

It doesn't sound like a virus to me. First thing to do is probably to empty the temp folders. I'm not using WindowsMe but if it is the same as Win2000, you should reboot and delete all files in:

- c:\winnt\temp\
- c:\document and settings\(you username)\Local Settings\Temp

I'm currently on a win98 workstation, so people might want to correct me if those path are not completely accurate.

You should also check in your My Documents folder if there is not a bunch of temp files (with ~ in the name).

What size is your normal.dot? It is (I think) in c:\program files\microsoft office\templates.

You said system resources are 17%. Is it wit Word running. How much is it just after booting and before running Word?

P.

 

[JMT]

gainso

That has happened to me a couple of times. It ended up being a corrupted file. I had to use "help" and type in the phrase "corrupted file." Help will then walk you through some diagnostics. You will need the original Windows CD.

Edit: Yeah, what Pedxing said...

 

[fredpb]

The oldest and most reliable fix.........


Restart windows in MSDOS mode.

"scanreg /restore"

Then select the oldest file.

Select that and reboot.

This has saved my stupid ass an infinite number of times.

And use regedit to routinely backup you registry, especially before any installation.

It just takes one little wrong write to your registry , and you are DOOMED!