BleepingComputer.com: Some documents hanging up when opening

Hi, first time post here. I maintain our church's computer systems and am an IT guy so know enough to be dangerous. We have a fairly new Dell desktop (2-3 years old) running XP Pro. Church secretary uses this machine and she is not very techy. I've run all the cleanup utils, virus scans, defrags, chkdsk /f etc. What happens is that after she is using the computer for awhile, she will go into My Documents and try to open a Word file. System seems to hang up. I checked the task manager and it says the My Documents has become non responsive. Have to end the task to get out of it. Seems to happen on any files in My Documents. I've been able to repeat it. I ran checkdsk /f, which seemed to run pretty slow. I'm beginning to wonder if the hard drive is failing but it only seems to happen when working in My docs. I'm going to do some more double checking but would be curious if you have any ideas or other things I could check. Thanks so much!

Kurt

Can you please download and run Speccy on the system, publish the results, and send us a link?

If it only happens with .doc files...chances are Word is damaged and needs to be uninstalled/reinstalled, IMO.

Louis

Hi, I ran speccy on the machine. Sorry but I could not publish the results to web link (same symptom showed up when I tried).. I am attaching the file instead. Now I'm beginning to think this is more virus related, not sure. Whenever I went into My Documents this morning and tried double clicking on a file, My Documents became unresponsive and I needed to end the process. However, I could open Word first and then open the files just fine without any problem. Everything else on computer seems to work fine until you open up My documents in the browser and try to open files. I run AVG virus scanner but not seeing anything yet. Thanks for any clues.

Well...you may have damaged Windows files...or you may have key files in bad sectors of the hard drive (which would impair normal functioning of such).

I would try running chkdsk /r first on the system partition.

If no joy, then I would try running sfc /scannow or doing a repair install of XP.

I would do those things before jumping at the malware theory of computer problems.

Louis

Is this issue isolated to MSWord documents? If you double click on the document in My Documents with MSbWord already loaded into memory, do you get the same delay?

Thanks for the XP serial number included in your Speccy report! You may want to consider removing that part.

Your Speccy report also says you have the coolest running system in town (31 degrees C). It is running cooler than outside my house where it is 35 degrees C right now.

I think there must be something curious about Speccy information.

It would not hurt to run a couple scans for malware and clean scans might make you feel better when you are done. With that out of the way, you can zero in on the culprit without wondering about what it might be...

I would start here:

Perform some scans for malicious software, then fix any remaining issues:

Download, install, update and do a full scan with these free malware detection programs:

Malwarebytes (MBAM): http://malwarebytes.org/
SUPERAntiSpyware: (SAS): http://www.superantispyware.com/

They can be uninstalled later if desired.

When the scans run clean, then troubleshoot any remaining issues.

This post has been edited by joseibarra: 29 September 2010 - 03:40 PM

Hi all and thank you so much for your help thus far. This website is great. Here's what I know thus far:

The system seems to work when I open Word first and then open documents. Hangs up when clicking on documents directly when Word is not open first. Secretary reports she may have seen this happen also with Excel docs but I cant validate that yet.

We are running Office 2003 and I'm pretty itchy to load 2010 if we cant resolve this. We are upgrading the church computers anyways.

I've run the chkdsk /r routine. Steps 4 and 5 (verifying file data/verifying free space) took very long to run, about 15 minutes each. Does that seem right?

AVG says all is good. I will run super anti spyware check this wkend as another check.

Thanks again for the help.

Have you tried performing a repair install of Office 2003 or downloading any and all applicable office 2003 updates?

Also you need to remove the speccy report as the user that told you to perform didn't tell you to publish the public snapshot which would generate a link to your specs without your Windows Key in the picture.

Removing that key isn't important. It's the default volume license key for Dell MCE 2005 x86 English Recovery images. I've used it before when reinstalling MCE on Dell machines without the user's recovery media.

At any rate, your system will have two different volume controls, one is an icon in the taskbar, which can also be accessed by Start -> Run and typing "sndvol32.exe". The second volume control is in the player software. A third volume control is probably a hard control in your speakers, a knob usually.

Check to make sure they are all turned up.

Windows Keys should still be safe guarded regardless of what system they come from.