Microsoft word screwing up- time to reformat?

[hornian]

So all of the sudden when ever I try to run microsft word I get an error message, my computer freezes, and I have to restart my computer. Not good as it's finals time and I need to use word ALOT. I'm going to try a systme restore, but might it be time to reformat my hard drive?

I've never actually done it, and the computer is 3.5 years old, I figure it could use one. Plus, I could finally get rid of Windows ME (shut up, I know it sucks, I've just never done anything about it) for XP since I can get XP for $6 from UT. Is it hard to do? I've looked at some how tos on the web, but I wanted a hornfans opinion before I dive in.

 

[hornian]

Ok, System Restore did jack ****. Apparently I don't have enough memory to run Word. I'm trying to figure out whats hogging all my memory, running spyware sweeps as we speak.

 

[TexasOwnzYou]

if word is integrated with your virus scan, try disabling it.

 

[hornian]

Yeah, uh, I don't know if it is. Anyhoot, my little bro showed me a trick (using word pad instead of word) that will get me through the night, and I'm going to go buy a cheap Windows XP disk from Campus Computers tomorrow and reformat my harddrive (after saving all my work thats not already there to webspace) and jsut start over new. I think this was the incentive I needed.

 

[EEE]

while you still have a bootable system, if i were you, i would put all my efforts and energy into backing up all my important files - including windows address book, bookmarks, etc. assume the worst is going to happen and be prepared. xp upgrade sounds like a great idea, but you may break more than you bargain for trying to fix the existing installation. if you **** something up, at least you are prepared for a fresh xp install.

 

[hornian]

Well, ****. I backed up all of my files, and went to create a boot disk... and it won't work, I can't create the boot disk.

It says The file 'aspi2dos.sys' was not found.

 

[EEE]

are you trying to reinstall win me? you can get an me boot disk from bootdisk.com.

 

[hornian]

No, I was trying to reformat my hard drive and install XP. I got the bootdisk off the internet, reformatted, and got XP installed. I don't know how much I like it, how are you supposed to take MSN Messenger off?

 

[kevwun]

How much ram do you have? If it's not more than 128, XP is going to run really slow on your pc. To disable windows messenger(I'm assuming that's what your talking about), go to control panel, administrative tools and then services. Find messenger on the list and right click on it. Stop it then choose disable. Also make sure to run windows update to get service pack 2 and all the other updates.