Office 2000 programs taking up memory

Hi all

I used to come to this site often, but I haven't in quite a while. I have a problem that's got me stumped, so I remember about how helpful this forum is. I work tech support at my university for the professors in the communications department. OK, here goes.

One of the professors computer has Windows 98 Se, and Microsoft Office 2000 (with the Service Pack). She noticed that her system is very slow lately (we recently reformatted the hard drive and reinstalled everything). She noticed that when she hits Ctrl-Alt-Delete, some programs she already closed out of still appear in the task bar. For example, if she quits Microsoft Word, it will still repeatedly shows up in the task bar. Since the programs (mainly Office programs) don't close, they take up memory and her computer runs slowly. Re-installing Office 2000 did not help.

Any ideas? Thanks for any help!

 

Coupla things:

1. Is she using Word as the email editor? Encourage her not to do so.

2. When you reinstalled Office, did you uninstall, then user Eraser 2000, then reinstall? You may need to. http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q219/4/23.ASP

3. What happens if you (close Word and) rename her normal.dot file to abnormal.dot?

4. Before trying eraser, close all apps, hit Start-Run for each of the following commands, enter the command and hit Enter. It may or may not open the programs:

winword.exe /regserver

excel.exe /regserver

That should re-register the programs with Windows. You can also try renaming the Word and Excel folders in the following registry keys (rename to OldWord and OldExcel while no programs are running):

hkey_current_user\software\microsoft\office\9.0\word
hkey_current_user\software\microsoft\office\9.0\excel

Though regserver should accomplish the same, I've found that, in fact, it does not, so I always try the regkey "dump" above. You don't have to back up the registry 'cause you can just delete the new folder and rename the Old folder back to its original name.

Make sure Outlook 2000 is not journaling anything. There should be no Office stuff in the startup tab when you run msconfig.exe, except, perhaps, the Office shortcut bar. Office startup and Findfast (came w/97) are not needed.

When's the last time her hard drive was cleaned up?

http://www.piersontech.com/07-CleanHardDrive.htm

Does she happen to have Visio installed?

Hope this helps. Let me know if problems still remain after you've tried everything, or if I've given you something to do and you don't know how to do it.

 

Thanks for such a thorough answer. I'll will definitely try your suggestions. I won't be back in her office to work on her computer until Thursday, but I'll reply back here after I've tried your possible solutions to let you know either way.

I know how to do the suggestions.

Thanks again for your help

Michelle

 

Another woman! Terrific!
(Dreamboat smothers sometimes from the testosterone flying around in here.)