BleepingComputer.com: Microsoft Word - problem with opening docs in Word

Hi

Here is a strange one. I have Microsoft Word 2000 on a computer running Windows XP SP3. I just began having a problem opening documents directly in Word. The documents will open but they are not right. For example, I have a document that is passworded out. Within Word, the document will open, but it does not ask for a password, and the contents of the document come up scrambled. Here is an excerpt of what it looks like:

+¨¥+ŒÑÐ7k'úp%V9
q|�F
tŠUzjikvnënnU
b*79gØCAg£
tÇŸâ”…Ðc\0B±~IÊ�_sD
l%*~tL
T,é*Oº>.³¥–lîCÞ
Ab/hA>[SŸ

This goes on for 20 pages.

However, if I go into Windows Explorer and open the document by double clicking on it there, it correctly asks for the password and opens fine. Weird, no?

I tried opening other documents from Word that do not have passwords. They open, but the documents include a bunch of formatting instructions that usually remain hidden. But from Windows Explorer they open fine. Here is an example:

Document opened with Windows Explorer

Blaine
Blair
Brody
Bryce
EVAN: English form of Welsh Iefan, meaning "God is gracious."
Lucas
Quentin
----------------------------------------------

Same document opened from within Word:

Blaine
Blair
Brody
Bryce
EVAN: English form of Welsh Iefan, meaning "God is gracious."
Lucas
Quentin

Normal
Normal
Default Paragraph Font
Default Paragraph Font
Hyperlink
Hyperlink
aC:\Documents and Settings\Doug\Application Data\Microsoft\Word\AutoRecovery save of Document1.asd
aC:\Documents and Settings\Doug\Application Data\Microsoft\Word\AutoRecovery save of Document1.asd
?C:\Documents and Settings\Doug\My Documents\Word\Boys Names.docÿ䀃老e
Unknownÿ！
Times New Roman
Times New Roman
Symbol
Symbol
Blaine
Blaine
Blaine
Normal.dot
Microsoft Word 9.0
Blaine
Root Entry
1Table
1Table
WordDocument
WordDocument
SummaryInformation
SummaryInformation
DocumentSummaryInformation
DocumentSummaryInformation
CompObj
CompObj
ObjectPool
ObjectPool
Microsoft Word Document
MSWordDoc
Word.Document.8
--------------------------------------------

Also, once the document has been opened with Windows Explorer it opens correctly from the recent documents list under the File menu in Word as long as it stays on the list. So it is only navigating to the document files from within Word that is a problem.

What may have changed recently to have caused this?
Over the past couple of days I have been working with one of the people at bleeping computer to try to eliminate some malware. The situation with Word was NOT a symptom of the malware. Word used to work fine even with malware in the computer. But we ran a bunch of scans and virus fixers during the exercise. Perhaps something we did screwed up Word, I don't know.

If you think the answer is to uninstall and reinstall Word, that is a simple enough remedy. But I wanted to check with you before doing that in case you have heard of this and something else is actually the problem that re-installing Word won't fix.

Thank You.

I would be hard to tell with your infection
You have an open topic in the HJT forum. You really should not make any changes until you are done there

OK. I will leave it be for now.

No worries, I discovered what was "wrong" with Word.

In the File/Open menu, when the navigation box opens, there is a drop down menu for File Type. Of course, that is "always" set to Word documents, right? so who ever looks at it? Well, somehow it got set to Recover Text From Any File (*.*). When I changed it back to Word documents, everything straightened out. I must have inadvertently changed the file type while doing something else, but since I did not do it on purpose, I didn't think to look at it when the box was open. I found the answer here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/259413

I know, I am not smarter than a 5th grader. Glad I didn't waste anyone's time with this.