Jerry,

It sounds like a lack of resources to me. Let's start with a basic thought. Does your system have the resources to operate your Internet connection, firewall, anti-virus and anything else you may have operating in the back ground along with the Office application.

If you are in the grey area a user cannot automatically assume since v2003 worked the upgrade would. In most cases yes, but it is not always guaranteed. It does occur where an upgrade will require additional resources. The question might be, are they available?

You could go to an trusted site, if there is such a thing in your mind, and disable your AV, firewall along with other applications you may be running in the background. Then try to use the new Office.

Please REMEMBER to enable your security applications.

DA

Thanks for the thoughts, I think it is not resource overload, and I'm using only the XP home firewall, pretty transparent I understand.

I'm running on a recent Gateway Notebook, in this case and on a recent Dell Desk Top in the other, the DT has no problems.

I will admit my Gateway does have some difficulties on Com1 (simulated via USB, of course). I'm still using dial-up and it uses Com1, as does my Palm Z22 sync connection. I can not run both at the same time for that reason. Further, and Gateway did send me a prepaid shipping carton to send the Notebook back for repair as the dial-up will establish only one connection per boot. When I hang up the phone line, I have to reboot to get it to work again. I'm about to go DSL here and decided not to send the Notebook in, loss of data and a lot of other concerns being top of my reason for living with the Com1/Dial-up problem. I suppose this could reflect back into my new MS Office problem

The installation of MS Office was a purchase DVD. The Notebook did come with Office 2007 ready to install, but I uninstalled that some time back as I was using Open Office, need commercial use. So, Gateway believes the machine has enough resources to run Office 2007.

I can take a look to see what's going on with the resources when in the stuck-state. As noted, Control/Alt/Del will not allow me to kill Word, for example, also I note Work knows it is in trouble and tries to send an error report to MS, I think it sometimes succeeds sometimes doesn't. The only way I can get Work (or PP, or Excel) to release is to hang up the Dial up. I may try a reinstall, but am reluctant as I have still to update Office via the Dial-up, about two hours of download time.

How do you check the resources on your machine? What do you look for?
Jane

I was referring to doing a contol/alt/del and clicking on the performance tab. That gives a real time graph of the CPU Usage and Page File Usage. To my mind, if these are low, a few % for CPU and low PF Usage exists, there are resources to do other work. Again I think the problem may be related to a dial-up problem I've not been able to fix, in fact Outlook 2002, has been on my machines since 2002, hangs up sometimes too, the only way I can get it to shut down, is to hang up on the data line.

I have Zone Alarm Firewall. When ZA asked permission for Word, Excel, etc (MS Office 03) to access a trusted zone on the internet, I selected DENY and REMEMBER THIS SETTING. I have successfully blocked Acrobat Reader and other software from accessing the internet without my permission the same way. Do you have that capability with your firewall???

Jane,

A look at the link below will report on how to find them. Basically you are looking for processor speed, RAM and H/D.

Good Luck! Enjoy!

DA

Here is a link that might be useful: System Requirements

Thanks, I think a firewall that would allow me to specifically block MS Office from access the Internet may solve my problem. Just block, Word, PP, Excel, not Outlook. Now, it appears to get free ZoneAlarm one has to install online, in the past one could download an installation package and install locally. I bet I still have it in my file somewhere. As noted, in the thread I think, I have not yet connect with DSL service, my plan, so installing ZoneAlarm over the Internet could be painful. I may not recall correctly, but I do recall trying to download free ZoneAlarm and got tied into an online installation process.

I hope you are able to find your file. I tested to see if I could email you mine, but it's too large at 38.8MB...

I do find in my download directory a February 2007 ZoneAlarm Installation executive of 39MBytes, so I can install that and go for updates, think I may give that a try to see if that fixes the Office hangup to the Internet, I may also take Gateway up on the offer to repair my dial up driver problem is I ship my notebook back to them.

As I recall, I need to turn off the XP Firewall before installing the ZoneAlarm.

Installed, and uninstalled, ZoneAlarm, the Feb 2007 version. When I was on-line and activated Word, it hung up and there was no indication from ZoneAlarm that Word had requested access to the Internet. So, it appears there is an internal, to the notebook, problem that relates Word to the data set driver being active. Looks like another reason to take Gateway up and send the Notebook back for a warranty repair.

I'd like to do the reinstall on the Gateway before sending it back, I'll check with Gateway to see if that's allowed. That done I should have all my personal data removed from the HDD, right? A complete reinstall of the factory software should reformat the disk before the installation starts, right?

Sorry it's not working for you, Jerry. The link below may answer your other questions.

Here is a link that might be useful: Tutorial to reformat your HD