MS Word malfunction

Running Office 2000 in Windows 7 Pro 64-bit.

All Office modules have been running successfully for a few years. Today however when starting Word this error message is received:

Windows Word has stopped working. A problem caused the program to stop working correctly. Windows will close the program and notify you if a solution is available.

All other Office modules continue to run without problem. The installation disc was inserted and the installation correction option chosen, which appeared to execute without problem. But Word continues to fall over:

There was a problem sending the command to the program

Can anyone advise? There is a strong desire to curl up in a dark corner and weep ....

 

Possibly a Windows Update caused this? Most versions of Office 2000 aren't compatible with Win 7 in the first place. Have you considered trying one of the Office-compatible freeware programs like OpenOffice, WPS Office, or Libre Office? All are good - I prefer WPS.

 

Possibly a Win 7 update caused this? Most versions of Office 2000 aren't compatible with Win 7 in the first place. You'd be better off switching to one of the free Office-compatible suites like OpenOffice, WPS Office, or Libre Office.

 

Changing the name of normal.dot allows Word to load and run successfully, but after closure any attempt to restart Word causes the same problem. The problem seems to be in retaining a working copy of normal.dot.

Going into Tools, Options, Save and ticking Prompt to Save Normal Template solves this problem (hat tip to Charles Kenyon), but it is necessary to respond No to a request whether the change to normal.dot should be saved.

Since a reinstall of Office did not resolve this, it seems that either a recently installed application has modified the COM add-in, or an update in the recent MS round has caused it. Testing with System Restore et ala has proved that it has nothing to do with the basic OS; and all doc files run on another computer without any problem - but it is running Win XP.