Tech Trials

Microsoft Word crashes after startup - fix found.

Bought a super new HP printer cum scanner cum copier this week. Copy performance is outstanding, very much better than separate scanner and printer. But when MS Word started having serious problems, I never dreamed the two events were connected.

Microsoft Word has been used across networks for over 10 years but the Office XP version still contains a bug which can cause it to crash a few seconds after loading.

Word checks the default printer, probably to find the current size of a printed page. If that printer exists on another computer on the network and that computer is inaccessible (eg switched off), then Word doesn't report this problem but just says it can't continue.

Spent a long time re-installing software before I found this explanation (on microsoft.public.word.application.errors). Hope it never happens to you.

posted by Chris Jakeman @ 10:26 pm