Microsoft Office apps stopped working after installing Norton Internet Security2009

Every time I open an Office app like Word, I get a message “Word has stopped working.”  It then tries to find a solution and exits.  I have read through forums, newsgroups and articles from Microsoft Help and Support website and a few other forums.  This is a common problem with many suggested solutions which have not helped.

This error occurs both for Word 2003 and Word 2007 in the Microsoft Office Professional suite on a single user Vista Home Premium x64 machine.  Both versions were not installed at the same time.  Excel 2007 has the same behaviour.  Word works in safe mode, but I cannot open a file.   All updates and Service Pack 1 have been applied. 

Specifically, this is what I have tried:

- Delete the Options and Addin keys in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Word and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Office\Word
- Run Repair from the disc.
- Run the Office diagnostic program with no errors. 
- Uninstall Office 2007, clean the registry and reinstalled.
- Make sure the Word\STARTUP under my Roaming profile is empty.
- Verified that my printer driver works.
- Disabled scanning of Office documents.
- Uninstalled Norton Internet Security 2009, clean the registry and reinstalled.

I noticed two strange things:
- There is no Word Data registry key to delete.
- When I rename the Normal template, a new one is not created.

Any assistance would be much appreciated since I’ve been trying to fix this for over two weeks.
(It’s a good thing Microsoft doesn’t build planes. They would be falling out of the sky like flies.)

Do you have scan office documents enabled?

It is disabled as I said in my orignal post under things I tried.

Hi sstdenis,

 

Have you tried re-installing Microsoft Office/Word after removing Norton Internet Security 2009? This is to check whether NIS is actually causing the problem. If you get the same message after reinstalling Word(without NIS 2009 installed in your computer), then it's a problem with Microsoft Office.

 

Have you tried the Office Diagnostics to determine/correct the problem in Word 2007?

  1. Click the Microsoft Office Button, and then click Word Options.
  2. Click Resources.
  3. Click Diagnose, click Continue, and then click Start Diagnostics.

 

Yogesh

Did you try renaming the registry entries?

 

Go to: CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Office/Word
Modify Addins -> oldAddins

Go to: CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Office/12.0/Word
Modify Data -> oldData
Modify Options -> oldOptions

Go to: LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Office/Word
Modify Addins -> oldAddins

If this does not work, then uninstall Norton product and check for the issue.

 

Vineeth--

Don't get me wrong.  I really appreciate everyone's effort to try to help me resolve my problem, but you please read  my original post to see what I have tried before suggesting a solution.

 

Thanks.

How did you uninstall NIS? using the removal tool? Otherwise you might want to test that as well


- Delete the Options and Addin keys in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Word and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Office\Word
- Run Repair from the disc.
- Run the Office diagnostic program with no errors. 
- Uninstall Office 2007, clean the registry and reinstalled.
- Make sure the Word\STARTUP under my Roaming profile is empty.
- Verified that my printer driver works.
- Disabled scanning of Office documents.
- Uninstalled Norton Internet Security 2009, clean the registry and reinstalled.

I think, I gave correct suggestion only. You have uninstalled and re-installed Microsoft Office 2007 first. You have uninstalled and re-installed Norton Internet Security afterwards. But, not tried uninstalling/reinstalling Microsoft Office 2007 after removing the Norton program completely. The scenerio will be as follows:

- Uninstall Norton program(cleanup the registry if you want)

- Uninstall Office 2007(cleanup the registry if you want)

- Reinstall Office 2007(Here Norton program is not present)

- Check whether the problem persists. If you get the same error, check with Microsoft further as there are no more Norton components to cause the problem.

- Reinstall Norton 2009 program.

 

My apologies for missing the information you have provided about Office Diagnostics.

Message Edited by yogesh_mohan on 01-08-2009 01:07 AM

Removal tool?  Do you mean Control Panel -> Programs and Features?

Norton removal tool is specially designed by Symantec for uninstalling all Norton 2009/2008/2007/2006/2005/2004/2003 products, Norton 360 and Norton SystemWorks 12.0. Sometimes the issue may be due to remnants from the previous uninstallation/installation. So, running that tool multiple times ensures that all the components are completely removed before you reinstall. It is recommended to use Norton removal tool to uninstall Norton programs for similar problems. You can find detailed instructions for downloading and running Norton removal tool in this LINK.

Thanks, it worked!  It's rather ironic that a piece of software that is suppose to protect me could cause me so much grief.  I think I'll give the disc to used for as a target when he's skeet shooting practice.  There's no way I'm putting that piece of junk back on my computer.  You would think a company the size of Norton would do some compatibility testing especially on a product so prevalent as Office.

 

 

For security, I’ve switched to Firefox which I trust more than IE7.  Gmail is superb at catching spam.  AVG and Spybot have  gotten a lot of praise. Screw Norton.  I'm going to tell any one running Office to avoid NIS 2009 like the plague.  I'm also going to have a chat with Chief of IT Security for the government department I work for.