Word freezes when trying to open files on disc

Honalo · Jan 1, 2010

OK tekkies, before I call the Geek Squad, I thought I'd come here for your valuable wisdom:

I have a book that I tried to save to disc today. No prob, right? Except when I insert the disc and then try to open Word to save my file, Microsoft Word freezes. Cannot open any Word files. Take the disc out and word is fine.

Now I'm having a parallel problem that might or might not be related. Rather than pay for the newer Word program when I bought the laptop 4 years ago I installed the old version of Outlook on my computer, courtesy of a friend who had the 1998 program on disc.

So when you buy a new computer you get, like, free use of the software for 10 tries or so before you have to actually buy the software and install it - you know, they ask you for a code, etc., etc., to access the program. Well I was always able to bypass that and never had a problem using the older Word program.

And then several months ago the newer word program started getting ansy that I wasn't using it so if I just, say, went into documents and called up a file - it immediately would bypass my older Word in favor of the newer Word - which I hate, by the way. The older Word works just fine for me. So I found that I had to first bring up Microsoft Word and then bring up the file and that worked out OK.

So now we're back to my current problem. I used to be able to save docs to disc all the time - but maybe that was before I was having this battle between old Word versus new Word.

I have a Compaq laptop by the way.

Am I explaining this correctly? Does any of this make sense? All I want to do is save the freakin book to a disc.

Please help - and know that I am not a computer geek in any sense of the, ahem, word - so I have no clue what's happening.

alleycat · Jan 1, 2010

Have you tried just copying the file over to the disk drive? That way you don't have to even bring Word up.

ejaycee · Jan 1, 2010

Does the disk have anything else on it? Perhaps there's a corrupted file of some sort.

Other than that, I can't really help because I'm a recent Mac convert. Sorry.

Honalo · Jan 1, 2010

All I can say is that i've done this before - no problem. copied files, saved files.

Clair Dickson · Jan 1, 2010

Can you uninstall the new copy of Word? Sounds like something got changed in the settings and the two copies of Word are conflicting with each other.

Unfortunately, if you uninstall the new trial copy of Word, it may screw up the old copy of Word. (Uninstalling may take "Word" components off the computer. Most programs are not designed to run the new version with the old version.)

Just because it worked yesterday doesn't mean it will work today. My taillight worked yesterday. My car started yesterday too. But the tail light burned out and the car barely started today. Nothing changed, except time and things that I'm unaware of. Computers are the same way-- worse sometimes because people rarely read the error/ information messasges the computer gives them and the updates for security reasons can change how things used to function (sometimes badly.)

I would recommend moving the file to the harddisk and seeing if it opens there. It's about eliminating possible problems, regardless of what worked yesterday. It's very possible the disk is the problem-- the fact the Word freezes makes me think the disk or the file on the disk that you're opening got corrupted. Word barfs when it runs into corrupted files, especially older copies of Word (newer versions have a some fancy tools for recovery.)

Matera the Mad · Jan 1, 2010

DON'T SAVE ON REMOVABLE DISKS :Soapbox:

Art_Sempai · Jan 2, 2010

Try clicking on the file and using open with option to use the other version of Word.
You could also just delete Word completely off your system and reinstall it.

Darzian · Jan 2, 2010

Art_Sempai said:
Try clicking on the file and using open with option to use the other version of Word.
You could also just delete Word completely off your system and reinstall it.

I don't think the OP has the installation disk for Word. If so, uninstalling could be disastrous.

The CD is likely corrupt. As suggested, try using the "open with" and selecting Word 2003 (old one). I've never heard of this before. In my experience, installing any new Office version overwrites the previous one.

Lance_in_Shanghai · Mar 20, 2010

Mela, you didn't give an accurate location, but in many countries, disc is the only word to use. In the U.S., the standard is to use disc to mean optical and disk to mean hard drive (no comment about non-disk shaped "disks", such as jump-flash-thumb-pen-camera-whatever). You said "...that I tried to save to disc." Do you mean you are trying to save to an optical disk? Typically, you can burn data to a blank optical disc or to a multi-session optical disc with the session still open. Once the session is closed for a multi-session or simply burned if your burner doesn't do multi-session, that's a read-only disc. Read-only means you can't burn any new data to it, rename any file on it, or move any file on it to a new directory. Drag the file to your desktop, edit it in Word, and save it to... wherever you can.

The process of burning data to a blank optical disc varies with operating system and the burning application. For my Mac, I drag anything I want to the disc, right-click the disc and choose "Burn". Various versions of Windows have various processes and usually a third-party application must be added to the process.

Word freezes when trying to open files on disc

Honalo

alleycat

Still around

ejaycee

knows nothing of your ruined garden

Honalo

Clair Dickson

A dark core to every cloud

Matera the Mad

Bartender, gimme a Linux Mint

Art_Sempai

Writer

Darzian

To-to-to-ron-to

Lance_in_Shanghai