[twood0267]

If I am using Word, I cannot have any other program open. It seems like a lack of memory, but I have 256 RAM, and it worked fine until about 3-4 weeks ago. I am taking a course on-line & need to be able to have it open & Word open at the same time so that I can take notes & type reports while I am viewing the course. Word becomes so sluggish, that it starts skipping letters & spaces in every work. When I finish with a sentence, it looks like this: Nw isthe tief or allgood mentocome to theaid o thr paty.
Does anyone have any ideas?

 

[Anne Troy]

First, do Word troubleshooting described here (probably only step 3 required):

www.theofficeexperts.com/word.htm

Second, if the first doesn't work, reinstall your printer with the appropriate driver for your operating system and model.

 

[twood0267]

Thanks Dreamboat for the suggestion, but this worked only for a little while. I had done this before, but after 30-45 minutes of speed, it startes slowing down again to almost not moving. Until I shut everything else down, and then it works fine. I didn't try the printer suggestion, because I wasn't sure you understood. I don't have any trouble printing. It's just while I'm typing in Word with any other program open. It slows down to the point of skipping every other letter or so. Like it needs more memory, but I have 256k which should be plenty according to Microsoft.

 

[Anne Troy]

So, you did all the troubleshooting steps?

And...a printer driver can most definitely cause problems, even when you're not printing.

 

[twood0267]

Yes, I went through all of the troubleshooting steps (which most of them I had done before), and I checked to make sure I had the correct print driver selected. Any other ideas?

 

[Anne Troy]

Reinstall the printer...

 

[twood0267]

I went to Lexmark.com to see if there was an update to my driver. The one listed for XP is not the same as the one that came with my printer (I have on disk). When I started to download it, it said the time it would take is 2 hours & 22 min. Does that sound right? I always thought print drivers installed fairly quickly. So, should I go ahead & try downloading it or just reinstall the one that came with my printer?

 

[Anne Troy]

No, the time doesn't sound right, but it could be a slow connection (even momentarily). I would download it anyway. I can't promise anything, unfortunately, but I do know that:

a) People have resolved many weird problems by resintalling/updating their printer driver

b) Weird spacing between letters is almost always a printer driver

c) You've done pretty much everything else

Of course, you can just try reinstalling your printer with your disk. See...just like any other file, a printer driver file can become corrupt. Also, you don't have to trash your original printer to install a new one or to install it again. It'll just call it "copy 2".

 

[twood0267]

Tried reinstalling printer, didn't work. Tried dumping the registry key, didn't work. (Sorry--I have two threads going & I answered you in the other one at first labeled ("reinstalling Word 2002). There's got to be something we're missing. Anyone else out there have any ideas?

 

[Anne Troy]

For some reason, I can't merge the 2 threads right now, but Mikey is working on the forum database, so... ?

Anyway, does the keyboard/typing work in email, NotePad, WordPad??

 

[twood0267]

Yes, the keyboard works in all other programs except Word. And starts malfunctioning in Word only after logging on to the internet. (I have to do that to access my on-line training course)

 

[rwba50]

I have seen a similar problem with memory and MS Word and this is what I discovered. First, I assume from the thread you are running XP, second you only have 256 MB of RAM. Question, how much hard disk space do you have? With only 256 MB of RAM, I do not think that is enough for running XP, Word, and much of anything else. XP will be using your HD for virtual memory and if your HD is getting full or has less than 500 MB of free space you will see a serious performance problem with Word, at least I have seen this happen.