Special Edition Using Microsoft® Office XP

Troubleshooting

Word Won't Start

Q1:

When I try to start Word, a dialog box appears telling me there's been a General Protection Fault (or some other error) in file Winword.exe. Even after uninstalling and reinstalling Office, Word just won't start.

A1:

There are many reasons why this could happen, but there's one easy solution that works at least half the time. Click Start, Run, type winword /a and press Enter. Word almost always starts. If it does, your problem probably lies in a corrupt template. Shut down Word and rename Normal.dot (to Old-normal.dot, for example). Then see whether you can start Word in the usual manner. If not, rename Old-normal.dot back to Normal.dot. Then try renaming *.dot files in your Startup folder, in a similar way, ...