A1 Law issues

Originally Published 2004-04-27 17:49:11

I'm having a problem on across all workstations when using the external MS Word Spell Checker. The error reads "winword.exe has generated errors and will be closed by windows. You will need to restart the program. A error log is being generated."



A brief search on msdn with the error message text produced several hits indicating that updating to the latest office service pack would fix the problem. Interestingly enough, after updating from Office 2K sans any SPs to SR-3, the spell check appeared to complete, but crashed rather than returning to A1 correctly. Prior to updating Office, the spell check typically crashed after only progressing through a portion of a given document.



Disabling virus protection had no effect on the error. Nor did logging in as a Windows administrator. The issue occurs on all workstations, regardless of the A1 user login credentials.



I also lowered macro security settings in MS Word from "high" to "medium" on the possibility that A1 is running a macro. (It would appear that no macros are present, but it was worth a shot.) No success there either.



At any rate, the error appears to be document-specific, not workstation specific. A given document in A1 crashes winword on all systems. I can probably send you an email with a sample of the document contents from one of the offending docs if it will help. I see nothing obviously problematic about the document I've been testing with such as international characters or control codes. I have not, however, examined the content in any level of detail.



The user who first noticed the issue claims that the error rate is 50% or more, but based on the number of users reporting the issue and my own observations, I'd place the error rate at about 15-20%. Again, I have not tried to determine any patterns within the document contents, although I can do this if it will help facilitate resolution.



About our standard setup:



+ Client PCs are all well-equipped P4s

+ A1 v5.00d

+ Office 2K SR-3

+ Symantec AV Corporate Edition v8.1.0.825

+ Windows 2K SP-4 with the latest security patches per windows update



Let me know if I can provide additional data. Looking forward to your suggestions.



Cheers,



Johnny Fuery

IT Consultant

925.997.3878