My wife has encountered a bizarre problem on her computer, a Dell desktop running Windows Me and Word 2000. All of a sudden it's become impossible to open Word or any Word document. We click an icon, the little window for Windows 2000 comes up and the computer freezes. I've copied one of her Word files and it opens fine on my computers. She doesn't do much on her computer and I've encouraged her not to use Explorer, so she has been working with Firefox. A friend may have opened Explorer the other day as I found some spyware after running Ad Aware - mainly to registry keys, which I deleted. I've also deleted all temporary files and run an updated Norton scan in safe mode, without any viruses turning up. I've tried deleting and reinstalling Word on her computer, but nothing is solved, which leads me to believe there is something evil lurking in the computer. Also, when I tried to unfreeze the computer via CTRL-ALT-Delete: I get an error message saying: 'Warning! The system's resources are dangerously low'

Sounds like there may be too many programs loading at startup (resources low), this is a good place to research startup programs:

Pacman's Portal

Are you rebooting and cleaning up leftover files/folders from the prior Word installation before reinstalling? Also might want to clear the Temp directory before reinstalling:

1. Navigate to the temporary directory.
2. By default the directory is located at C:\Windows\Temp\ (the path will be different if there are separate user accounts).
3. Press control-A to select all files and folders.
4. Press the delete key. (shift+delete bypasses the recycle bin)

Many thanks for your response.
In fact, I had a feeling the resources problem was at the root of this, so before I received your response, I changed the min/max virtual memory figures (I think I put 300/700 from 0/13000 - please let me know what is normal). Anyway, didn't fix the problem.

Regarding your advice, I followed the steps at pacs portal to try to eliminate some startup programs in msconfig. That didn't fix the problem either. I'm not sure whether any of these can also be eliminated (these are the ones still checked in msconfig):

MSN Messenger - everytime I uncheck this, it's checked again after a reboot, despite the fact I deleted the Messenger program.

ScanRegistry
TaskMonitor
SystemTray
LadPowerProfile
AtiPTA
ccRegVfy
LoadQM
MSN Messenger (again!)
SSDPSRV
ATIPOLAB
*StateMgr
Sagem (this is our wi-fi program)
run=

All the temp files had been eliminated, but I did this again. I tried very carefully to eliminate all remnants of Word and reinstalled using WorkSuite. When I tried to create a Word document in Worksuite program window, viola, Word reappeared, and from there I was able to access all the Word documents. Then I went to the My Documents folder on the desktop and right clicked to open with Microsoft Word Document and, viola, that worked too. So, looks like a happy ending...but:

I then went to firefox and installed 'furl it'. Curiously, this is the last thing I did on my wife's computer before the Word problem. Then I tried to open a Word document and the old problem was back, with the message about resources being dangerously low. Deleted furl it and carefully went through the routines for opening documents that I described in the previous paragraph. Now everything seems to be working again. I can't believe that adding a basic firefox extension would create this problem. What do you think?

Would you advise me to delete Microsoft Explorer from the computer? (which is probably behind the MSM Messenger returning to the MSconfig).

Thanks for your reactions to all this.

>>I can't believe that adding a basic firefox extension would create this problem. What do you think?<<

Very weird. I wouldn't think so either, but I have not tried that extension. Is this the extension?

Furl Tools | Firefox Add-ons | Mozilla Corporation

Usually Firefox writes nothing to the registry except during installation/uninstallation or when setting default browser.

The only startups that you listed above that are essential to your pc's operation are:

ScanRegistry
*StateMgr

and if it's a latptop possibly:

LoadPowerProfile

Those entries for Ati also may be required for your display to work properly? (Also probably leave sagem alone.)

I've never used an Ati graphics card, so I can't be sure about that.

You also need to ensure that any security programs such as antivirus and firewall are allowed to startup with Windows, but I don't think I see any entries for those at all.

It's not a good idea to run a pc connected to the web without both.

Most programs can be "told" not to start with Windows from within their own options, using msconfig to disable them is usually a last resort type of thing, but some programs require it to prevent their starting with Windows.

I think you may have a malware problem and it might behoove you to run some online scans:

Online malware scanners

As to virtual memory, you could leave it as Windows managed unless you're trying to squeeze every drop of performance you can from the pc, in that case set both minimum and maximum the same; at three times the amount of RAM installed in the pc.

Have you tried deleting normal.dot?

MICROSOFT WORD TROUBLESHOOTING

It would help if you listed your system specs, at least CPU & RAM, plus the size of your HDD & how much free space you have left. Do you have System Restore enabled? It can take up a fair amount of disk space, depending on how it's configured.

I'm not entirely sure which OS you're running, WinME or Win2000? If it's Win2000, install "ShootTheMessenger" to prevent the messenger service from loading at startup. However, this is NOT the same thing as MSN Messenger:

http://www.grc.com/stm/shootthemess...

Download/install CCleaner & use it regularly. Run the Cleaner & also "Scan for Issues". You can configure the settings, or just go with the defaults. It's available at the following site (#1 most popular), along with a LOT of other useful programs:

http://www.filehippo.com/

The computer is all in French (my French is somewhat limited), so I have difficulty finding this info, but here's what I've learned (don't laugh, it's not a very powerful computer, about 5 or 6 years old):
Windows Me
64 MB RAM
system resources 72% free
hard drive 20 GB
hard drive used - 5.19GB
I can't figure out how to know if System Restore is enabled. I'll follow your recommendations later. I've followed the recs of Leroi as well.

Thanks again for all this help!

Update: After following these various instructions, it seems that Word is now back to normal. However, now I have another problem. Whenever I start up or reboot the computer, I get a message (in French) saying something like 'the last recovery after shutdown has failed, do you want to restart Windows? yes or no.
Then I quickly see the Me window, then another error message (both error messages on a black screen), then Windows starts to launch and then I am prompted for a password. After hitting 'return', Windows launches normally. Any suggestions?

"*StateMgr" is NOT required if you turn off System Restore, which is a space and memory hog and is perpetually nibbling on your hard drive and usually doesn't work when you need it most.

Instead of "TaskMonitor" I assume you mean "TaskManager" and you definitely do NOT need that (or is that the difference between the English and French OS, both referring to the same thing?).

PCHealth is not listed as a startup item. You don't need that either, but it's usually on by default.

There was a French version of Delindex that can take a lot of crap off your computer, but apparently it not availavle any more.