Using a process viewer, I discovered that there can be as many as 7 copies of WINWORD.EXE (32-bit, one thread, base priority=normal) continuing to run on my computer after I have closed all my word processing documents. However, my Norton for Windows95 CPU monitor can show 100% of CPU cycles taken up if even one copy of WINWORD.EXE is still running after I’ve closed the Word document I was working on. I am not trying to multi-task when this glitch occurs.

Reinstalling Word for Windows 95 hasn’t fixed the problem. The only thing that works is rebooting the computer. (The system invariably hangs when I first try to reboot from the keyboard. I have to press the reboot button on my PC to make the reboot happen.) Then the problem begins all over again when I close a Word document. Does anyone know how I can fix this problem?

I installed Norton, a virus scanner, and some other stuff. After a while I needed a 600000 Mhz computer to keep up with it all. I started getting crashes more often, and things would bog down to a crawl.

You don't notice because it's a gradual thing, it steals a little here and a little there till it's all gone!

I decided to run a minimum system, keeping the virus scanner and "Bomb Shelter", but turning off anything that used up CPU cycles, or did anything "automatic". Now everything runs OK and at full speed. Bomb Shelter doesn't seem to slow anything down, and it has saved me several times from crashes so it's a trade off (it's part of Nuts & Bolts Utilities).

It's too bad you can't have all of this cool stuff working all the time, but it seems like the more you add to Windows the worse off you are.

I also decided not to upgrade anything unless absolutely necessary. It's all working fine now, why do I need to change it?

I hate it when these software companies expect you to upgrade every 6 months or so, I just get everything to work OK and then some silly upgrade comes out and they expect you to get it. Then if you do, it causes problems in something else, needs more memory / hd space or something and then you are back into a upgrade of your whole computer. What a joke!

So my suggestion is to get rid of anything you don't need and see how that goes.

: For two years I ran Word for Windows 95 (Word 7.0) on a Dell 200 MHz Pentium computer with 64 MB of RAM without any problems. During the last few months, I’ve noticed that my computer was slowing down and even freezing. This degradation in performance appears to be triggered by closing a Word document although it doesn’t happen every time I close a Word document.

: Using a process viewer, I discovered that there can be as many as 7 copies of WINWORD.EXE (32-bit, one thread, base priority=normal) continuing to run on my computer after I have closed all my word processing documents. However, my Norton for Windows95 CPU monitor can show 100% of CPU cycles taken up if even one copy of WINWORD.EXE is still running after I’ve closed the Word document I was working on. I am not trying to multi-task when this glitch occurs.

: Reinstalling Word for Windows 95 hasn’t fixed the problem. The only thing that works is rebooting the computer. (The system invariably hangs when I first try to reboot from the keyboard. I have to press the reboot button on my PC to make the reboot happen.) Then the problem begins all over again when I close a Word document. Does anyone know how I can fix this problem?

The slow-down problem only occurs when I run MS Word 7.0 and WINWORD.EXE refuses to release system resources after I've closed the Word document I was working on. It's WINWORD.EXE that is having the problem. But the problem appears intermittent.