Word attachments crash the machine when opened from Outlook

[Ceri]

I wonder if anyone has ever seen this before. Several of my users have a problem where Word will crash when they open an attachment directly from an E-mail in Outlook.

The problem seems to be related to infections (of Normal.dot) with Word macro viruses, because when we delete the normal.dot template, it usually cures the problem. (I should explain that for some reason the Virus software we use can't successfully disinfect Normal.dot)

HOWEVER, this isn't always the case... some people find that no matter how many times we delete Normal.dot and disinfect the rest of their system, their machine STILL crashes when they try to open a Word attachment from an Outlook e-mail. In all these cases so far (whether deleting Normal.dot works or not) if they download the file and THEN open it, the machine doesn't crash.

All our users are running Windows 95, with Office 97 service pack 2 and Outlook 98 (with all patches necessary to make these applications Y2K compliant). Our virus software is Command Anti-Virus for Windows 95 v4.58.3.

Has anyone ever had this problem? If so, what did you do to cure it?

Thanks in anticipation.

[Mntsnow]

Just a thought off the top of my head is to make sure they are not getting the crashes due to low system resources..I'm going to bed and will sleep on it and see if i can come up with anything else...but I;m sure others will be here to answer your question before I get a few hours sleep in! http://www.sysopt.com/forum/biggrin.gif

Mntsnow

[Ceri]

Hi there and thanks for the reply....

That is a distinct possibility, actually, thinking about it! Most of our users seem to work on the basis of having Outlook, Word, IE, our big bespoke databasing system and about four other things running all at once, and most of them will only have 32MB of RAM. I'll check that on Monday (not in work on Friday! Yippee!) and see if that's the situation. In the mean time, any other suggestions will be very welcome!

Thanks again,

Ceri