[kyinaire]

I recently bought and installed Office 2007 on my Windows XP SP3 computer. But I have an issue with Word: whenever I open up a context menu in the ribbon that takes a while to load (such as Insert -> Cover Page, or Page Layout -> Themes), my computer literally crashes. My screen fills with shaking yellow and white lines and the cursor freezes, and I cannot move anything, let alone restart the computer. So I must unplug the computer, plug it back in, and turn it on again.

No screenshot is possible because my computer becomes dysfunctional when this issue comes up.

Before I installed Office 2007, I tried a 60-day trial version, which worked perfectly. No crashes, no issues at all. Not sure if this may have affected the real version...

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[EBSchrader]

Did you uninstall the trial version before installing the full Office 2007?

[kyinaire]

Not completely sure, but I used Word 2000 after it expired... is there a way to check?

[EBSchrader]

Do you still have Word 2000 installed, too? Many times 2007 programs get wonky when there are other versions in the same computer, I understand. Go to Control Panel|Add/Remove Programs and see if either the 2007 trial version or Word 2000 is there. If so, you definitely want to uninstall the 2007 trial version. Word 2000 may not matter. Let us know what you find out.

[kyinaire]

Apparently I had already uninstalled the trial version of Word 2007, and I just uninstalled most of Word 2000 (no idea how to uninstall completely, since I cannot find my CD). By "most of Word 2000" I mean removing the "Office" folder and the HKCU/Software/Microsoft/Office/9.0 registry keys.

Word 2007 seems to be intact after the uninstall of 2000, but I have yet to try opening up one of those context menus. I'm currently working on a paper, don't want my comp to crash now... I will test it later.

Thanks for the help so far!

[kyinaire]

I just noticed that my "Insert -> Cover Page" is dysfunctional now; it says to "Remove current cover page" but when I do so, it still tells me to remove the current. I'll probably end up reinstalling Office 2007, and then once I fixed this new problem I will try out the ribbon issue again and post an update here. Whew..

[EBSchrader]

Is it only Word 2007 where you are currently have trouble? If so, perhaps the problem lies with our old favorite *normal.dot* -- in my Word 2007 the file is called normal11.dot. Close Word, rename normal11.dot to normal11.old, and relaunch Word. It should create a new normal11.dot file (but you will lose your formatting).