System dangerously low in resources error

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My wife’s computer started acting up this morning. After downloading an update from Norton, Word started hanging with the message “System is dangerously low in resources! Winword [not responding]” appearing once she clicked Ctl+Alt+Del. I can’t figure out if this is a Word problem or a general Windows problem but I’m leaning towards Windows, since once Word hangs every other program on the machine starts to hang with an Insufficient memory error appearing on the desktop screen once you try to open the program (any program). Am I on the right track? Is this a Windows problem or a Word problem and what might the solution be? Many thanks in advance for any help.

ATL

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How about this answer? It’s both of ’em.

The error you are seeing is because some program is stealing system resources – more than it has been allotted – but it’s also because Win9x/ME don’t handle memory particularly well. Depending on your version of Word, you can run “Detect and Repair” from the help menu – you’ll need you CD handy – only Word 2000/2002 can do this. WinME is doing what it can to keep your system afloat but Word is the one with the attitude problem. You remove have to office entirely and re-install it to try and fix the problem.

If you are using Word as your email editor in Outlook it can also leave Word running silently in the background and potentially cause problems this way.

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Thanks for the quick response, Mark. We’ve got Word 2000 SR-1 running on her computer. The problem with the detect and repair solution is that I can’t even get Word to open, it just locks up once I open it or any Word doc, sending everything else down the drain with it. Your opinion is that I re-install office (it’s actually Works that came with the computer)? I’m such an amateur that I get nervous even thinking of this (and my wife’s wrath if I bungle the job).

Anthony

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Have you deleted ALL of the temp files including the ones that are in the folder that Word defaults to?
These can and will provide all kinds of problems.

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

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Yep, just dumped them (and there was a load of them) which allowed me to actually get into Word from the Works icon on the desktop and I ran Detect and Repair, reconfiguring Word with the CD but I’m still hanging the computer when I try to access a previously created document. OK, I’ve just been able to open a new word document through the works menu and then access a previously created document from the File drop-down menu, but this doesn’t really help since my wife has tons of files she’s using at the moment. Re-install Word or all or Works as a solution?
ATL

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Problem mysteriously solved, Dave and Mark. After backing out of the document I opened from the new document opened up in Works I was able to access all of the already created documents in the various files in my documents folder. Bizarre. I don’t know how this sorted itself out aside from trashing the temp folder junk and running the detect and repair. Thanks for the very prompt help.

Anthony

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It wouldn’t hurt either to uncheck the unneeded resource hogs in Startup: run, enter msconfig, click the Startup tab. An excellent, comprehensive resource for identifying unneeded startup applications is at
http://www.pacs-portal.co.uk/startup_index.htm.

I was having similar resource problems with ME, and using this information helped significantly.

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