Word 2007 mystery crash resolved
Last week, I was baffled when Word 2007 began crashing each time I closed the program. This was happening on a secondary system running Windows Vista Business, so I made a mental note to look into it more closely when I had a chance.
Today, I ran across a new Knowledge Base article, 940791, which described a set of symptoms that were a perfect match for mine:
You install an automatic update for Microsoft Office Word 2007 on a Windows Vista-based computer. Additionally, the computer must be restarted after the automatic update is installed. However, if Word 2007 is running when you restart the computer, you may experience the following symptoms:
- The mouse does not work when you use Word 2007.
- You cannot open a Word document from the Search window in Windows Vista.
- You cannot open a Word document from Windows Desktop Search.
- Word crashes when you try to start or to exit Word.
The article doesn’t say which update is to blame, but my money is on either 939159 or 933360, both of which were released on August 29 and rated Important. A quick look at the Windows Update history pane shows that those two updates were applied to my system on August 29, and Event Viewer’s Microsoft Office Sessions log confirms that was the date the Word crashes began. Word 2007 had indeed been running last week when those updates were applied. I remember because I noted that the unsaved document I had been working on had been automatically saved and was automatically reopened after the system restarted.
The fix is fairly simple, As explained in the original article, just delete the following Registry subkey:
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Word\Data
Mystery solved.
Hello Ed,
Just had this problem hit over trhe weekend. Apparantly it has nothing to do with the specific patch, but is a poroduct of MS update process itself. Interesting that MS knows about it, posts a fix, but doesn’t address the problem directly. Even MSO diagnostic program doesn’t find it.
Just another huge THANK YOU! Even after running Microsuck’s diagnostic utility twice and using the repair feature from the install disc…this is what worked. You’re awesome!
18 months later and still relevant information.
Thanks for posting man.
Support.microsoft.com articles for MS Word reg-key fixes
Trouble shoot = http://support.microsoft.com/kb/921541
Reset User options = http://support.microsoft.com/kb/822005
Thank you for sharing!!!
This issue as been fixed by a “Windows Update” for HP Printer series (April 2009). The Data key in the registry never worked for me. What did work was NOT setting my HP printer as default. When I saw the windows update I was curious. I set my HP Printer as the default after applying the update and none of the Office applications have crashed after a number of times with different documents and restarts in between (for some other Windows updates)
Finally this is fixed!!! This issue has been a pain for over a year
As I read the other posts…I’m amazed the renaming of the Data key worked for a lot of people, because it never worked for me and my problem appears identical to the one everyone else is having. Somewhere I saw a post about HP Printers and not setting it as default. Once I set something else as default the problem went away permanently and consistently…about a week later the Windows Update came out for HP Printer Series.
Actually it was Mindstrider’s post that clued me in to the HP Printer issue…that is no longer necessary..See “Windows Updates”!!!
A BIG “thank you” goes out to everyone for your help on this. Solved my problem with Word!
Thank YOU!!!!!!!!!!! – wesome post that fixed this annoying issue. all is right again in my world hehehee
This problem cropped up in the last week (post a windows update) -Deleting the registry key worked perfectly.
Thanks