Word is slow to load (2000)

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We have an interesting/troubling situation on our network at work. Everyone is running Office 2000 and service releases run from 1a through 3. Some computers are WIN98SE and some are WIN2000. Four out of 8 computers are now finding that Word and the Office Shortcut bar are opening at glacial speed, even simple one page documents. Access and Outlook open normally. Given that this is only affecting some of the computers and it all started this week and there has been no new software added in quite awhile, has anyone got any bright ideas as to the problem?

The obvious culprit is a virus, but virus scans show absolutely nothing and numerous have been run. Any thoughts?

Peter

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Is there any software on the computers that automatically updated itself during that time? This could include components of Windows, Office, or the antivirus software itself. Maybe you can spot a difference there from one to the next.

Or maybe it’s that Y2K+4 bug coming home to roost.

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Is there any software on the computers that automatically updated itself during that time? This could include components of Windows, Office, or the antivirus software itself. Maybe you can spot a difference there from one to the next.

Or maybe it’s that Y2K+4 bug coming home to roost.

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This has just started happening to me, too. Word takes well over a minute to load today. There are 2 things that have changed on my system that I’m aware of: Norton Anti-virus auto updates occurred, this morning, I believe; and I finally gave in and let Messenger install its updates so I’d be rid of that annoying message that keeps popping up. Could either of these things be the culprit? Is there any cure? Suz

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In the main Norton Anti Virus window, click Options, then select the Miscellaneous tab. Make sure that “Enable Office plug-in” is clear (NOT ticked), then click OK. Perhaps this was turned on by the NAV update.

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In the main Norton Anti Virus window, click Options, then select the Miscellaneous tab. Make sure that “Enable Office plug-in” is clear (NOT ticked), then click OK. Perhaps this was turned on by the NAV update.

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This has just started happening to me, too. Word takes well over a minute to load today. There are 2 things that have changed on my system that I’m aware of: Norton Anti-virus auto updates occurred, this morning, I believe; and I finally gave in and let Messenger install its updates so I’d be rid of that annoying message that keeps popping up. Could either of these things be the culprit? Is there any cure? Suz

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I’ve had complaints from four clients today on this subject; we noticed it yesterday afternoon.

The problem is Norton phoning home to Verisign. Get yourself a copy of TCPView from SysInternals.com – it shows connections in real time, and it’s pretty clear that this Norton is the cause. Every time you open Word, open a document, open Norton SystemWorks or any of their utilities, you’ll see ports open and close. When it finally connects, Word opens, or the document opens. Delays range from 10 seconds to several minutes. Word gets involved because Norton Antivirus is hooked into it. Access, PowerPoint, Excel, and (surprisingly) Outlook seem unaffected by it. All of the Norton Utilities programs that I looked at do the same thing.

I won’t editorialize about what I think about it, but suffice to say I’m not happy. I’d suspect that it’s just a bandwidth problem, with hundreds of thousands of users attempting to connect to the same servers at the same time. I’m just not sure why they would do this in the first place. It raises an obvious question: what happens when my internet connection is down?

I’d be very interested to hear what the real story is from other posters.

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Is it “fixable” by (temporarily) assigning the host name to 127.0.0.1 in the machine’s hosts file?

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Is it “fixable” by (temporarily) assigning the host name to 127.0.0.1 in the machine’s hosts file?

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I’ve had complaints from four clients today on this subject; we noticed it yesterday afternoon.

The problem is Norton phoning home to Verisign. Get yourself a copy of TCPView from SysInternals.com – it shows connections in real time, and it’s pretty clear that this Norton is the cause. Every time you open Word, open a document, open Norton SystemWorks or any of their utilities, you’ll see ports open and close. When it finally connects, Word opens, or the document opens. Delays range from 10 seconds to several minutes. Word gets involved because Norton Antivirus is hooked into it. Access, PowerPoint, Excel, and (surprisingly) Outlook seem unaffected by it. All of the Norton Utilities programs that I looked at do the same thing.

I won’t editorialize about what I think about it, but suffice to say I’m not happy. I’d suspect that it’s just a bandwidth problem, with hundreds of thousands of users attempting to connect to the same servers at the same time. I’m just not sure why they would do this in the first place. It raises an obvious question: what happens when my internet connection is down?

I’d be very interested to hear what the real story is from other posters.

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You’re not alone. See post 328997 or this thread at Slashdot.

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You’re not alone. See post 328997 or this thread at Slashdot.

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Thanks to all for the answers. As others have suggested, I would bet money that Norton is the problem. One assumes that Norton will eventually fix the problem? And at least we now know what the problem is. I have found that if I start Word from the task bar or the Start menu I don’t have this problem. Unfortunately right clicking icons is also miserably slow.

Peter

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Thanks to all for the answers. As others have suggested, I would bet money that Norton is the problem. One assumes that Norton will eventually fix the problem? And at least we now know what the problem is. I have found that if I start Word from the task bar or the Start menu I don’t have this problem. Unfortunately right clicking icons is also miserably slow.

Peter

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