Microsoft Office updates are seperate from the regular Windows updates. Go to the Microsoft updates page and do the one for Office and see if that helps. If you think there is an issue with the IE7 then deinstall it and use something else.

Absolute worst case scenario... After a while, for some unknown reason, Windows begins to eat itself...

The entire XP operating system shouldn't crash. IE 7 has its share of problems anyway, and unfortunately Internet Explorer is buried so deep in the XP system that if it's screwed up, than it screws up the operating system as well.

If it gets worse, I would recommend a complete backup of your files, and a complete reinstall of XP from scratch. 9 times out of 10 this fixes most serious problems, and would be a long-term fix. Plus it's like having a brand new computer with fresh installs of everything. I know it's a pain in the butt to do, but sometimes it's needed.

quote:

French Toast said: My computer is five years old and runs Windows XP. My Microsoft Word and Window Explorer 7 crash every several days. I've tried deleting and reinstalling Word but that hasn't help.

Is your computer set to automatically download M$ updates or do you just periodically launch Windows Update? If you periodically download updates, try launching update again to get what M$ says is new.

At least every 3 to 5 months, M$ has provided security updates that are drastically flawed and they can cause crashes just as you describe. In these cases, a "Version 2" of the update will be released some time later (usually about 5 to 15 days later).

Microsoft usually releases security updates around the 15th of the month. I usually wait until the 30th of the month so that I can gather only the updates that have been re-released into a "version 2."

Windows, Internet Explorer, and all of the Office programs, including Word, use many of the same core Windows files. A flawed security update has been known to cause these crashes. I've experienced them. The "Version 2" of the update has been the remedy in the past.

On the other hand, Anti-Virus, Anti-Spyware, etc. can certainly cause problems. Have you tried turning them off to see if Word still crashes? Unfortunately, turning them off sometimes requires a lot of study on your part to discover just how they force themselves to intertwine with your operating system at boot up.

You can look at M$ security bulletins at: Microsoft TechNet Security Bulletins

You'll see there's a lot for mid-Feb. I'm waiting a week or two before I implement them so M$ can have time to get the bugs out, although, sometimes the "fix" doesn't come until 30 to 45 days later.

I solved the problem by reformatting and reinstalling everything on the computer. My IE 7 and Microsoft Word work great now. I do have automatic updates enabled and I do check the updates page for non-critical updates regularly, too.

http://update.microsoft.com/microsoftupdate/v6/default.aspx?ln=en-us

quote:

Originally posted by French Toast:
My computer is five years old and runs Windows XP. My Microsoft Word and Window Explorer 7 crash every several days. I've tried deleting and reinstalling Word but that hasn't help.

I have good anti-virus, firewall, and ani-spyware programs. I keep them updated and run tests regularly. Any ideas what's going on here???

Time to put in a new cmos battery and maybe flash the bios muchacho.