Microsoft Word Crashing Frequently

I discovered a serious problem with Microsoft Word 2007 and potentially other Microsoft Office applications where if a networked printer is offline and is set as the default printer in Vista and XP would cause the following symptoms:

• Long opening times
• Unable to open a document because it does not exist at [enter location] even though you clearly just double clicked on the file
• Opening a blank document and choosing File > Open and application hangs when trying to open the file
• Cause other applications to hang whilst any of the above has been encountered (especially Window specific software like Explorer)

I discovered this when I set my default printer to the “Microsoft XPS Document” printer as default and everything opened fine. I proceeded to try and get on the CUPS web page but it was offline as well as other services from the server. A quick reboot and everything returned back to normal.

Adobe’s Acrobat Reader do suffer from this problem but only when you try to print a PDF file.

I’ve never experienced this sort of failure when I was working at GlaxoSmithKline and when a printer server / queue went down which makes me think it might be an issue with a setting some where like a timeout.

About Danny

I.T software professional always studying and applying the knowledge gained and one way of doing this is to blog. Danny also has participates in a part time project called Energy@Home [http://code.google.com/p/energyathome/] for monitoring energy usage on a premise. Dedicated to I.T since studying pure Information Technology since the age of 16, Danny Tsang working in the field that he has aimed for since leaving school. View all posts by Danny → This entry was posted in Linux, Networking, Windows and tagged Acrobat, CUPS, Explorer, GlaxoSmithKline, Microsoft, PDF, printer, Vista, Window. Bookmark the permalink.

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