Office–lag time or processing behind the scenes (Office 2003 SP1)

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I have been having a problem with Office 2003. I first noticed it with Word, but now I am seeing a similar problem with Outlook…

When I have Word open, about every 10 seconds I see the mouse hourglass come on. If I happen to be typing at the time, the lag time can be about 10 characters behind.

In Outlook, when I go to my calendar and am in the month view, if I scroll to the bottom of the window, all of a sudden the window jumps and I have to figure out where I am.

Can anyone tell me if they have seen this with Office or is it our machines. (I am not the only one.My co-workers and I all got new computers and it is happening on all of them).

Thanks.
Ruth

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It might be a good idea to upgrade to Office 2003 SP2.

Check out Phil Rabichow’s Systematic Approach to Behavioral Problems in Word (97/2000).

You could also right-click an empty part of the Windows taskbar and click Task Manager. Activate the Processes tab and see if there is a process that hogs the CPU – perhaps an over-zealous virus scanner or something similar.

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I have tried that a while ago and gave up and now when others complained, I decided to try looking for an answer again. Nothing is hogging the CPU. And we may not be able to upgrade due to the tight security of updating software at work.

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Are these computers on a network and saving files to a nework drive including the Outlook files?

DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

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Well Outlook is, using Microsoft Exhange Server, but Word is running locally and has this problem even when open and idle.

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In Word, try changing the AutoRecovery save interval under Tools>Options…, Save tab and see whether the hourglass interval changes…

In Outlook, yes, this is an annoyance I noticed for a while. It seemed that every time Outlook checked for new mail (synchronized with the Exchange Server) the cursor would be scrolled into view in the active message regardless of how far away I had scrolled from that line. Very irritating.

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thanks. This was the first thing I did. No change in how Word is responding. Glad to hear someone else is feeling the Outlook pain. Is there anything we can do to change it?

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Not exactly the same, but my wife is having a somewhat similar problem as described in this post 543,560. And, no I haven’t found a solution yet.

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You are so right. This sounds VERY familiar. I have had two suggestions. One to call the Help desk for the computer manufacturer. One person thought it may have something to do with partioned memory? And maybe the company, in their infinite wisdom has something that is checking all of my keystrokes. However, we have noticed that it only happens in Microsoft related products. The lag time is less, but is still there in WordPad, but there is no lag time in Notepad.

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Have you checked whether the Indexing Service (Find Fast?) or something like that is enabled? This used to be a bit of a resource hog.

Just a thought.

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I’ll check that again when I get to the office. I don’t think it is on, but… it might be. I’ll let you know.

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It looks like the available system resources are very low. One of the running processes consumes all available CPU resource, which forces your system to accumulate incoming character strokes in the buffer and process them when more CPU resource is available (you see it as all typed characters suddenly appear). Check CPU usage – press Ctrl-Alt-Delete keys on your keyboard simultaneously, then click on “Task List” button and on the next screen on Performance tab. How high is CPU usage when hourglass appears on the open Word document? You can try to determine which process is using CPU most by clicking Process tab and then CPU column header twice (sorting descendent, as in Excel). “System idle process” means no process.

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When the hourglass shows up, the CPU usage only goes up to 18-22%. The Page File Usuage stays preetty steady at 386 MB.

Under processes, when WINWORD.EXE shows up, it only shows about 2%. SMC.exe is contantly showing , but the System Idle Process only goes down to 83%.

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Another tool, which I think is better than Task Manager’s Processes tab for an overall view of What’s Going On on your system, is SysInternals Process Explorer, which shows potentially all the processes in the same window.

John

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(Edited by HansV to make URL clickable – see Help 19)

How do I mark this RESOLVED… Are you ready for the answer?? It was a print driver… a BROTHER print driver. I search on the web again… and started reading a thread that looked similar to this… voice recognition is one of the big culprits too. But not for this person. It ended up being a print driver. So I dutifully deleted my printer from Printers and faxes and the !@##$%^W@$% hourglass disappeared!! So refreshing. Thanks for ALL of your help. Now I don’t know where I found it, but the search was for an “intermittent hourglass” and I did not have to pay for the answer. I refound the link: here.

Thanks for everyone’s help!! This issue is now closed!!

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Thanks for sharing the solution – it may well help someone else with the same problem.

BTW, we usually don’t really “close” a thread. Mentioning that the problem has been solved is enough.

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