Office crash with unknown fault

[Shazaam]

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Running Vista home for about 2yrs using ms office 2003 w/o problems. Recently (noticed about 3 wks ago), all of my ms office 2003 programs (word, excel, ppt) began crashing when opened directly (i.e. double click the desktop link or the program file .exe, or via the run command). Within seconds I see MS has encountered an error and needs to close (see word error code below as an example). Word will not open in safe mode or w/o add-ins, excel will only open in safe mode (/s), but not w/o add-ins (/a). However, if I double-click a previously saved office file (ppt, excel or word), the program opens the file fine with no problems yet identified (except regarding endnote described below). I can also start a new blank document just fine once I have opened a previous document. Also, I can open word by double clicking the normal.dot template.

Things I've tried to no avail:
1) ms office updates (sp3)
2) vista updates (including sp2)
3) deleting the word template (normal.dot) (which would only fix word)
4) changing the word template location
5) changing to different default printers
6) detect and repair, reset default settings
7) lowering macro security settings and deleting the list of trusted publishers
8) disabling firewall (ZA) and AV (nod32) from startup
9) ms word has a support template to fix things. the file opens but the macros crash once clicked
10) uninstall, delete all mention of office from program files, app data, registry, and re-install
11) No add-ins are listed. I had endnote X installed, but word disabled it. I've since uninstalled it to no avail. After re-installing it, word will disable it.
12) Perusing google, web forums, ms office web page, etc. for suggestions to try.

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: BEX
Application Name: WINWORD.EXE
Application Version: 11.0.8307.0
Application Timestamp: 49ee835a
Fault Module Name: unknown
Fault Module Version: 0.0.0.0
Fault Module Timestamp: 00000000
Exception Offset: 00396ed0
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Data: 00000008
OS Version: 6.0.6002.2.2.0.768.3
Locale ID: 1033

Any comments or suggestions are welcome. Thanks!

[LaalaManii]

Try to run a repair setup. That is the only solution I found almost in all threads here. That is quiet right way also. Because you can try to troubleshoot the problem while re-installation helps you more. You can simply get rid of damaged files from your system. It is a good way of fixing problem of office setup.

[Shazaam]

good thought, but I don't have any system restores that date back far enough.

So this is kind of random, but perhaps you can shed some light on this fix...

By unclicking the startup task pane (under tools\options) in word, ppt, and excel, all three start up just fine via the desktop link (and have stopped disabling the acrobat add-in). I haven't tried to re-enable endnote, but will post the results.

Does this "fix" give any clues to what's going on? thoughts and comments welcome.

Endnote still causes word to crash. I'm guessing this isn't an issue with endnote per se, but a general issue with running macros. Security is set to medium. Using the support template to fix word problems also causes word to crash as soon as I click on one of the repair keys.

When word tries to repair the problem via restarting and recovering the document template, styles 1 is listed as the only repair...Resaving the template does note however fix the problem. Any thoiughts? Perhaps it's time to call MS.

[GoldStein]

Do you have any antivirus installed in your system. If yes then try to remove or disable that for sometime.You can disable that for the start and check out. Also a number of addons in the Office application are cause of the problem. You have to ensure that those are disable. You can run Office application under safe mode which is another good way of avoiding errors. You can use office installation media and try to run a repair setup also to overwrite the system files.

[Shazaam]

Obviously, ms office is designed to work with macros. My specific problem deals with a conflict between ms office and macros on my computer (i'm guessing) hence the crash when macros are run. Endnote had always been installed. I provide it as a specific example of the type of problem I'm having. Running other macros results in a similar crash with unknown fault on my system. Possible suggestions for a fix or a place to start in addition to those already mentioned/listed.

Problem solved:
Data Execution Prevention (DEP) was secretly causing the problems. I was installing a new video driver and dep kept killing the setup.exe. Interestingly, I've had problems before with this service and had turned it off. Guess an update turned it back on. Anyways, by disabling DEP my problems with word were solved which were:

startup task pane caused crash immediately upon fresh startup but not from a previously saved .doc (once disabled, word startup was fine)
asking word help a question caused immediate crash
running endnote caused crash
other macros embedded in .doc files caused crash

To disable DEP:
Open a command prompt and type:
bcdedit.exe /set nx AlwaysOff

or:
bcdedit.exe /set {current} nx AlwaysOff

RESTART
verify it's off via typing in the command prompt:
wmic OS Get DataExecutionPrevention_SupportPolicy

0 = off
1 = on for all
2 = on for somethings (google this for more info).

Thanks for your comments and help. I always though MS help was an oxymoron but it looks like MS security falls in that category as well.

[Mr.Jocosa]

You can go inside event viewer to find out more details on the error log. There you can find all error details with description. On that basis you can simple troubleshoot the application. I got the problem a time ago due to corrupt vba installation.

[lmoore]

Help! I've got the same issue with Endnote. Only I'm using office 2007 and windows 7. I tried to do what you said about the DEP - only my computer is telling me I don't have access to it. How do I change that?

[marcjuju]

Found a solution that worked for me.

I had about the same problem on Windows 2008R2. Actualy The entire office suite (Excel/Word/Outllok) gave me the Office12Crash problem. The problem started appearing after performing a Windows Update. I started uninstalling each one of the updates until the problem was fixed. It appears that uninstalling windows update KB977724 fixed the problem.

Solution: Uninstall windows update KB977724.