Everytime I start MS-Word recently it hangs almost immediately, and I need to Ctrl-Alt-Del to get out of it. I have re-installed it to no avail. I have deleted Office97 and re-installed to no avail. I have renamed "normal.dot" to no avail. Aside from re-installing windows I am now stumped. I tried running Belarc advisor to get full system info, but that hangs at 54% too. Since re-install of Office, I now have Findfast.exe showing twice in the tasklist. If I end it, both of them disappear. I recently uninstalled Norton Internet security as it slowed the system to a near halt. I replaced it with CA-Eztrust. Anybody got any ideas, bar re-intalling windows. Thanks.

try disabling findfast from startup folder, and other non essential programs from msconfig startup, boot in safe mode and scan disk for errors, check drive free space and swap file size settings, may check with defrag if fragmented, try dx diagnose for errors scan with sfc.exe to check for corrupt system files and replace from win cd,or update if not corrupt, try scanreg for errors and reg clean version 4, try repairing iexplorer if required may need to reinstall windows only if files are too faulty, no need to format or delete old files at this time... :)

If IE Repair doesn't help, restart in MS-DOS and, when you get there, type scanreg /fix (then hit Return key). If it happens to be a registry problem it can sometimes help, harmless anyway. Type exit (hit Return) to restart Windows. DerekW

Thanks Bofra,that's a lot of alternatives. I've got some questions for you please. Scandisk runs clean after a reset or power off/on restart. Is it important to try it in safe mode ?. By "check drive free space" do you mean check hard drive free space ?. How do you check swapfile size settings ?, and how do you judge/analyse results ? What is "dx diagnose" ? I assume sfc.exe is executed from START, RUN ? I already ran Registry Checker from within "System Information" icon, no problem found. What is "Reg clean Ver 4" I have done I.E. Repair from within "System Information" icon, was that what you meant ?. Thank you once again, very helpful.......hopefully !!.

Scandisk is often run in Safe Mode so that it is not interrupted by background programs. If it will run in Windows then I reckon that's fine. I think Bofra meant HD free space. You can check the swap file situation by right clicking My Computer/Properties/Virtual Memory. There are various tweaks (sometimes controversial) but for most folk just letting Windows manage it is fine. Unless you have tweaked this I doubt it has much bearing on problems of the severity reported. There are various ways to get to system file checker but typing sfc in the Run box is the quickest. See my collation on this old post, plus WhitPhil's additions: SFC CAN GET IT WRONG Similarly DirectX diagnostics can be run many ways but typing dxdiag in the Run box is nice and quick. DerekW

... oops I forgot the last two: RegClean is an old Microsoft registry cleaner that is no longer supported. There are different views about registry cleaners but I have found MS RegClean as safe as any. You'll need to Google for it unless someone gives a link. I think IE Repair from System Information is what Bofra meant. Again there are many ways to get at this. DerekW

Derek, many thanks for your suggestions and answers. I will give things a try and let you know how I get on. Cheers, Andy.