SteveOH

Word 2007 will not start up.  It just won’t.  All I see is the splash screen for 5 seconds, and then a silent crash (no error message).  The error log shows an Event ID 7003, session terminated unexpectedly, and some other helpful messages.

So I combed the internet, spent much more time than I should have troubleshooting, and I finally found what the issue was.

Here’s what the deal is.  Apparently Word scans the default printer of the system and loads printer settings, which allows it to set up the WYSIWYG editing and printing capability.  Which is great, however, if the page configuration of the printer (and other settings of course) don’t jive with it, it will fail (in my particular case, the CPU would stay at around 30% (on a dual core, which is significant) and the memory utilization of winword.exe would increase rapidly from 8000 kb to 230,000 kb, at which point it crashed silently (or graciously as some might say).  The issue is the default printer.  If you have a printer that you must print to (and therefore, cannot simply delete), set the Adobe PDF printer as the default and see how nice it is to have Word 2007 startup correctly.

This is a bug, without question.  If a program simply doesn’t functional as defined, for whatever reason, and the application is not prepared for the situation, it is a unforseen / unplanned error and therefore constitutes a bug.   Hopefully they’ll fix it, because the 20 hours I spent troubleshooting this are gone forever.

Because of a protocol error, this session will be disconnected.

For some months now, I’ve not been able to use Microsoft Terminal Server to connect from my laptop to my work desktop. Oh, I could connect just fine, but then immediately (or very shortly) after logging in I’d be disconnected with the unhelpful error, “Because of a protocol error, this session will be disconnected. Please try connecting to the remote computer again.” What does that mean, and what do I do if the error happens again when I try to reconnect as it says? off to search for an answer. Nothing useful there, and Microsoft’s help for this message is complete useless. “Try connecting to the remote computer again. If you receive the same message, contact the server administrator.” Reconnecting caused the same problem, and I’m the administrator. I tried contacting myself, but I couldn’t get through. Now what?

I had already ruled out bad patches, bad software installations, and even went through a series of troubleshooting steps to “reset” terminal server. Out of the blue today, I got the idea that maybe the visual style I was using could cause this problem, as it might be a drawing issue that TS can’t handle. I was using the “sgnome” style (don’t remember where I got it but I think it was from deviantART originally), so I swapped back to the default Luna style and tried a TS connection.

It worked! Okay, verify it. Previously, the act of opening an email in Outlook could cause the error, so I tried that. It still works. Tried replying to an email, still worked. Now my TS sessions are rock solid, I’m not getting kicked with a “protocol error”, and all I did was change my style back to Luna. WTF? Well, I can’t live with Luna as it’s too boring, so I went searching for a different style. I settled on Reluna, after verifying that it didn’t break anything else.

Why did I think of visual styles? In the past I’ve had bad styles that broke other things. Most notably, I’ve had some styles that caused really bad rendering problems when opening a scheduled meeting request from Outlook. If a style can screw that up, it certainly can screw up Terminal Server. The moral of the story is to be careful when using user-created visual styles. They’re not certified by Microsoft in any way (in fact, you will generally have to hack uxtheme.dll or pay for something like StyleXP (which is what I use) to use non-Microsoft styles at all), and can do some nasty stuff. If you do run into random problems that you’ve never experienced with a previous style, switch back to Classic or Luna as part of your troubleshooting steps, and see if that solves it.

A little while ago I posted the specs of the new tablet I had purchased off eBay. I got it at a steal of about $300. It was used (a little more used than I would have preferred) but they were just cosmetic imperfections that I could certainly live with. Gotta love eBay.

But I wanted to give some time of use with the tablet before I made a decision of whether it was a good buy, my thoughts on its functionality and usability, and overall feeling of the unit.

Well, for starters I have to say that the RAM is lacking. Mine actually had 512 MB and it’s still a bit sluggish with applications running (Adobe Acrobat Pro 8.0 and OneNote 2007). With both of these apps running, my system has only ~40MB of RAM free, but the processor is at around 10% usage, so the memory is the bottleneck with respect to running applications and responsiveness. However, the CPU will of course spike to 100% when writing in OneNote. This is expected, since the system must compute your movements, pen pressure and fluidity on the fly.

Other than that, I really can’t complain. I upgraded the Hard Drive to a 60GB 7200RPM drive, which runs nice and has plenty of space. Additionally, I plan on (of course) purhcasing a gig of RAM for it, at which point I’m sure she’ll run just lovely.

The usability of the tablet is awesome. I’m a student and a professional, so lugging around my 7 lbs Dell E1505 with 17″ screen is a hassle. Although it blows the specs out of the water, it’s mobility, down and dirty features for convenience (the function buttons on the screen, etc), and light weight (under 2 or 3 lbs I believe) are excellent.

Lastly, I purchased this tablet for the following purposes:

1. Light weight system to read eBooks and other electronic format books
2. System to work on school work as well as troubleshoot network / system issues

I had initially purchased a Sony PRS-500 eBook reader for ~$200. It’s a great little unit (although there’s plenty of room for improvement), but found that it was horrible for reading PDF files. And when I say horrible, I mean it. If you wanted to actually be able to read them, you would have to spend about 2 hours of format conversions, etc etc to get it to a point where it’s actually readable. 2 hours, yea right. I immediately started looking for something else. So I came across a tablet (I have a co-worker who’s always said tablets were awesome) and found this great deal on eBay. I sold my PRS-500 for and purchased the Tablet, putting the difference in cash (about $100). The tablet did everything the PRS-500 can do, and more. It’s not as light, and not as small. However, the Lifebook was made to be outside viewable (a shortcoming of LCD screens) so it’s very bright. Additionally, I can view ANY format I want, since there are free viewers out there for every format you can put a document into. PDF’s look great, and reading them off a 12″ screen (as opposed to a 6″ screen) is ideal. Additionally, I can use it at work and at remote locations, as well as take it to class. Which leads me to my third reason.

Textbooks cost hundreds of dollars a semester. This current semester my books were going to come to $300. That’s for 1 course! I had a great idea though… since I have this reader, why don’t I just download / buy the eBook versions, which are usually at a discount?! So that’s what I did. It’s awesome!

Additionally, I can use it to take notes. I don’t know about you, but I’m a geek. If I could have everything digitally and on a computer, I would. So, I take notes in class using the unit, and it’s superb. Great responsiveness, I can use colors, I can copy and paste images into them, etc etc. I can print them out if I need to (printing quality is also quite nice), and I don’t have to lug around a note book, books, and a laptop. Everything’s in the one unit!

So, I have concluded that I will never purchase another laptop.  Since a tablet (not a slate) can be both a tablet and a laptop, what’s the point of buying one that can only do one function?  Additionally, a system with dual cores should run just lovely, since one processor can concentrate on the text translation while the other runs the OS, or both at the same time to make things a lot quicker.  Dell just came out with a tablet that’s quite thin and has great specs.  The only downside I can see from the tablet is it’s cost.  Since it’s new, cool, small and light, and can be as powerful as some other systems out there, it costs more.

If you’re not a student, write a lot, or a professional who can use a light and mobile system to get work done, take notes at meetings, etc etc, then a tablet wouldn’t be for you.  Tablets are great for me though .

(This is an excerpt from Microsoft Article ID: 921541)

Delete the Word Data registry key
Most of the frequently used options in Word are stored in the Word Data registry key. A common troubleshooting step is to delete the Word Data registry key. The next time that you start Word, Word rebuilds the Word Data registry key by using the default settings.

To view these options in Word 2002 or Word 2003, click Options on the Tools menu.

To view these options in Word 2007, click the Microsoft Office Button, and then click Word Options.

Note When you delete the Word Data registry key, Word resets several options to their default settings. One such option is the “most recently used file” list on the File menu. Additionally, Word resets many settings that you customize in the Options dialog box.

To delete the Word Data registry key, follow these steps:
1. Exit all Office programs.
2. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
3. Locate the following registry subkey, as appropriate for the version of Word that you are running:

Word 2002:
KEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\10.0\Word\Data

Word 2003:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Word\Data

Word 2007:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Word\Data

4. Click Data, and then click Export on the File menu.
5. Name the file Wddata.reg, and then save the file to the desktop.
6. Click Delete on the Edit menu, and then click Yes.
7. Exit Registry Editor.
8. Start Word.

If Word starts and works correctly, you have resolved the problem. The problem was a damaged Word Data registry key. You may have to change several settings to restore your favorite options in Word.