Word 2007 files take forever to open in Vista (was: Will an SSD help?)

[JorgeA]

dencorso,

Uh-oh -- we are worse off than we thought. I don't have Acronis, either. That question about using Acronis or Norton Ghost was a hypothetical: I've been considering using one or the other, but [ahem] haven't gotten around to it yet. If puntoMX replies in the affirmative, then that would eliminate both of them as suitable candidates for my system.

System Restore worked perfectly today, I'm happy to say. And BTW, Norton did agree with you that the RAMdisk program was safe. But by then I was more worried about why System Restore wasn't working, than about that neat little application. So Norton gave reassurance in one case, and made things harder in the other.

--JorgeA

[dencorso]

As the owner of a Seagate HDD, you've entitled to use Disk Wizard... and it has just the needed imaging capabilities. Read its manual, then get back to me. But in any case, an external HDD of the right size would be necessary to proceed with minimal confort. Uless you have one already, I'd strongly suggest a USB 2.0 Seagate FreeAgent Go from 512 to 750 GiB.

[BlouBul]

BlouBul,

Thanks for explaining, I see.

Hmm... I think I'd much rather muck around in the registry than reinstall Vista and/or Office!

The first prize will be to surgically remove the bad office code in the registry. I personally would have just used the ol sledgehammer approach as suggested (after a backup of the registry and creating a System Restore point) you are also renaming the office dir in the registry (and not deleting it), and can change it back if it doesn't work. The changing of the settings shouldn't take too long to fix again (you will have about 3 min spare from each time you opens a word file ) but that's just me.

If that doesn't work I would have (again, thats just me) installed Vista and Office on a new partition. Shouldn't take too long or be too much of a pita if you still have all the install disks. (and you will still have all your data and programs on the other partition that you can use if you get stuck for any reason.) If that works you can install the rest as well and use one partition for data and another for windows installation. I like to format my hdd at least once a year to get rid of all the old junk that seems to accumulate in the registry.

But first, let us try it the elegant way. That will also be a better solution for this thread than a reformat and re-install.

Windows 98 is looking better and better from the rearview mirror.

Off course if you install win 98 on the new partition, your system will be really flying...

[BlouBul]

(In Registry, scroll down to >

HKEY_CURRENT_USER > Software > Microsoft

Here you will find a folder named 'Office'. Rename it, for e.g. to 'OfficeOld'.

dencorso,

what do you think of instead of deleting the whole Office directory in the registry, to go one level deeper and deleting (or rather renaming) the directories for the old Office versions (after a registry backup and creating a System Restore point)?

Also, maybe a stupid question (I do not know too much about disk images), but if he creates an image of his drive as it is now, won't the same problem occur again if he recreate the image somewhere else?

Edited October 4, 2010 by BlouBul

[BlouBul]

FWIW, I think I discovered how to disable DDE (not that I think that is the problem anymore) http://www.msfn.org/...post__p__940125

Also have you tried detect and repair? http://www.msfn.org/...post__p__889266

Edit: Sorry, Detect and Repair was for Office 2003, now it is Office Diagnostics http://www.howtogeek...ft-office-2007/

Edit 2: I think you can only disable DDE in Excel, I do not have the option in Word 2010, but do have it in Excel 2010

Edited October 4, 2010 by BlouBul

[JorgeA]

dencorso,

Thank you for the link to the Seagate DiscWizard manual. I've started to go through it.

For what you have in mind, does it make a difference whether the new external HDD is a Seagate? I found the "Western Digital WD Elements 1 TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive" for less than US$80 on amazon.com. Would that serve the purpose?

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

(In Registry, scroll down to >

HKEY_CURRENT_USER > Software > Microsoft

Here you will find a folder named 'Office'. Rename it, for e.g. to 'OfficeOld'.

dencorso,

what do you think of instead of deleting the whole Office directory in the registry, to go one level deeper and deleting (or rather renaming) the directories for the old Office versions (after a registry backup and creating a System Restore point)?

Also, maybe a stupid question (I do not know too much about disk images), but if he creates an image of his drive as it is now, won't the same problem occur again if he recreate the image somewhere else?

BlouBul,

Excellent question. I'm curious to see what dencorso says.

As for the first question, we can probably dispense with it (or make the necessary adjustments to the procedure) because I don't have any old Office versions on my PC. This was a brand-new computer when I bought it, and the Office 2007 installation was on the virgin HDD.

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

FWIW, I think I discovered how to disable DDE (not that I think that is the problem anymore) http://www.msfn.org/...post__p__940125

Also have you tried detect and repair? http://www.msfn.org/...post__p__889266

Edit: Sorry, Detect and Repair was for Office 2003, now it is Office Diagnostics http://www.howtogeek...ft-office-2007/

Edit 2: I think you can only disable DDE in Excel, I do not have the option in Word 2010, but do have it in Excel 2010

BlouBul,

Thanks for continuing to look into this, I appreciate it!

I don't seem to have a way to disable DDE in Word 2007.

However, I did get to use Office Diagnostics. Pretty cool find! I had no idea that that existed. It fixed one issue with Office that, however, it didn't specify. But while a test file opening before using Detect and Repair took 4:27, the test file opening after running Office Diagnostics took 3:24.

I'm going to try a few more things before undertaking more radical measures.

--JorgeA

EDIT: I tried Norton Disk Optimization, and Norton Cleanup. Time to open the big file: 3:15.

@BlouBul:

@dencorso:

Would it help to go into Task Manager and see if I can disable some (unnecessary) processes that might be slowing things down, or not really?

Edited October 4, 2010 by JorgeA

[dencorso]

Also, maybe a stupid question (I do not know too much about disk images), but if he creates an image of his drive as it is now, won't the same problem occur again if he recreate the image somewhere else?

Sure. And that's precisely the idea!

After creating a "dumb", byte-by-byte image *and making sure it can be redeployed correctly* one can mess up one's installation seven-ways-to-Sunday, and then get back to *just as messed-up as it initially was*, so nothing one does is not undoable.

Think of it as a bullet-proof form of undo.

[dencorso]

I found the "Western Digital WD Elements 1 TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive" for less than US$80 on amazon.com. Would that serve the purpose?

Let's see:

1)Western Digital WD Elements 1 TB

Advantages: Has independent power supply (good for booting it), is possibly cheaper, has a turn-off button, has more storage space.

Disadvantages: Is big and cumbersome to transport.

2)Seagate FreeAgent Go 0.5 - 0.75 TB

Advantages: Is pocket sized and easy to take anywhere.

Disadvantages: is powered from USB (bad for booting it), is possibly more expensive, hasn't a turn-off button, has less storage space.

The issue with booting is that conventional HDDs must spin-up before they get ready, and an USB-powered external HDD may start to get power too late for booting, in some machines, so one'll get a "Boot sector not found" message on attempting to boot. But, bu then the external HDD has already spun-up, so that a simple <Ctrl>-<Alt>-<Del> will result in a correct boot on the second attempt. But one will be condemned to do it everytime one boots from it, when just after turning on the machine. Nothing one cannot live with, but an annoyance, all the same.

Would it help to go into Task Manager and see if I can disable some (unnecessary) processes that might be slowing things down, or not really?

Not really, and certainly not at this point.

[BlouBul]

Also, maybe a stupid question (I do not know too much about disk images), but if he creates an image of his drive as it is now, won't the same problem occur again if he recreate the image somewhere else?

Sure. And that's precisely the idea!

After creating a "dumb", byte-by-byte image *and making sure it can be redeployed correctly* one can mess up one's installation seven-ways-to-Sunday, and then get back to *just as messed-up as it initially was*, so nothing one does is not undoable.

Think of it as a bullet-proof form of undo.

Thanks dencorso, that makes sense

Another question (bearing in mind my lack of knowledge of images), but since he is only using 110GB of his 500GB, can't he make an image on the same drive (maybe another partition)?

[JorgeA]

dencorso,

Let me know what you're envisioning us doing here.

The reason I ask is because you raise the portability factor as a negative for the Western Digital. (I'm not committed to the WD, I'm genuinely curious.) How would that be a problem in our case? I wouldn't be moving the drive from place to place. At least, I don't see how that need would arise in our case.

Even counting that in, though, it sounds like the WD's pros outweigh the cons.

If I understand what we are thinking of doing, I'm guessing that one or the other of these drives would be used to image my internal HDD so that we can tweak and adjust the latter at will. Then if we mess up we can restore the system from that external drive; or if we succeed then we can keep the external drive for storage and backup. Either way, I wouldn't be booting permanently from an external drive, or even have to keep it on the desk after we're finished. Right?

--JorgeA

[dencorso]

Right. Well, I mentioned the portability factor because I'm suggesting you to buy hardware, so it might be a good idea to think whether it wouldn't be more useful for you afterwards in case it were portable as a wallet. It has no bearing whatever with what I'm envisioning, which, in fact is precisely what you guessed. The ideia is to use the external HDD to hold one, or maybe several images, as we proceed. I use one or more DVD +R DL (Dual-Layers, 7.9 GiB) to store permanatly known-good images. But, at this point, we don't really have any known-good image to store, so that's a moot point. And whatever the tool we use to create/deploy the images must work independently of the OS we're trying to fix, that is be bootable or work from DOS or from Win PE, so as to give us the freedom to mess the OS we're trying to fix beyond bootability and worse. Until we're sure you can do that OK, we don't start.

@BlouBul: Images housed in other partittions in the same HDD will be in the wrong place when things go wrong. I'm not thinking about doing anything very extreme here, but things go wrong when what gets done is not what one intended to do. Images are only safe if they are in another media which is *off-line* during troubleshooting and only brought to bear in case one needs to restart from scratch or when giving up for the time being (as jaclaz always points out, giving up for good is *not* an option ).

[BlouBul]

Thanks for continuing to look into this, I appreciate it!

You're welcome,

I don't mind trying to help (not that any of my ideas worked yet), it is like dencorso always say:"Adiuvat plus qui nihil obstat" (No, I don't speak Latin, but Google Translate does)

As dencorso also said jaclaz said giving up is not an option.

Would it help to go into Task Manager and see if I can disable some (unnecessary) processes that might be slowing things down, or not really?

I think by booting in safe mode, we have eliminated most of those processes.

@BlouBul: Images housed in other partittions in the same HDD will be in the wrong place when things go wrong. I'm not thinking about doing anything very extreme here, but things go wrong when what gets done is not what one intended to do. Images are only safe if they are in another media which is *off-line* during troubleshooting and only brought to bear in case one needs to restart from scratch or when giving up for the time being (as jaclaz always points out, giving up for good is *not* an option ).

OK, I see, thanks again for explaining. I guess System Restore and registry backup won't be good enough if something really goes wrong.

[dencorso]

I hadn't noticed Google was giving a shot ito Latin, too!

Well, it gets near, but not enough.

It should be "Helps more he who doesn't hinder" or something like it.

And, yes:

When things get really ugly, registry backup and System Restore are not nearly enough.

Bear in mind I don't envisage things getting *really* ugly, but, then again, who does?

So, since we cannot possibly ever foretell it, we must always be prepared for it beforehand.