Hey all, need help big time.. For the longest time, wordpad and MS word (all versions -- 97, xp, and 2003) crash almost instantly after startup. If I start typing quickly, the crash holds off until I stop typing. I have no idea why it happens, the only message I get is the generic "encountered an error and must quit" etc.. I'm thinking perhaps there is a service or something that word relies on to run, that I have disabled.. but I looked through the list and there's only a couple things disabled and I don't think they're related anyway.. if someone has encountered this before and figured out how to fix it, that'd be awesome!

Hi Mike521 You could try deleting NORMAL.DOT file This is the template file for Word, and many problems can be cured dy deleting it. Next time you start Word, it will be re-created from default. Do a search for normal.dot and delete any you may find. Krystyna

thanks for the tip -- I tried that but it didn't work :( Here's some additional info though to my surprise, it ran perfectly in safe mode (I thought I'd tried that months ago with no success). Here's the report I see when I go to event viewer\Application: The source is Microsoft Office, no Category, and event is 1000 Faulting application winword.exe, version 11.0.6113.0, stamp 40077019, faulting module hpzntp04.dll, version 2.80.0.0, stamp 3ba7d3f7, debug? 0, fault address 0x0001fdc3. There are dozens of these, all are identical. Then there's one where the source is "Application Error": Faulting application wordpad.exe, version 5.1.2600.1106, faulting module hpzntp04.dll, version 2.80.0.0, fault address 0x0001fdc3. Then there's some hex numbers, etc.. I don't think I have anything particularly conflict prone running. Mcafee virusscan, zone alarm firewall, and nvidia motherboard and video card drivers / software.. I suppose the next step is to start up in normal mode, and one by one, kill all running user processes, then kill system processes, till I find the one that's conflicting with word, right? Any better way to narrow it down? Thanks so much for the help :)

Hi Mike521 Two links that might help. The first is for Events based on the error code and source. http://www.eventid.net/search.asp This next one is a link from within the page for Microsoft Office errors - looks very hopeful for a cure ! http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/ProbsOpeningWord.htm Good luck Krystyna

thanks a ton!! as it turns out, the problem was that my default printer was a shared printer connected to another machine. if that machine was turned off and word couldn't find the printer, it crashed. nice huh?? so I installed a little "print to file" printer and set that as default -- problem solved. I'd been suffering with this problem for like 2 years!! thank god it's solved lol

You're welcome ! Krystyna