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Opening Excel crashes system

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Has anyone come across this strange problem?
This one user cannot get into Excel 97 on her Windows 95 machine. When she opens Excel after a fresh cold boot Excel locks up at the splash page. Hitting CTRL+ALT+DEL brings up a window saying that “Excel caused an invalid page fault in module USER.EXE (or unknown, it varies)” and hitting OK gives the next message, “The system is dangerously low in resources! Would you like to terminate the following application?”
Hitting yes brings up another similar window asking to close another memory resident application. This continues and makes the computer inoperable. The only way to get rid of the messages is to reboot.
The strange thing is this is only limited to this one user and only to Excel. She logs into a Netware 5.1 server. I have no problems when I login as myself and run Excel. What can be causing this? It just started happening. She says that nothing has changed on her computer recently. Any suggestions?

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Opening Excel crashes system

In reply to Opening Excel crashes system

Is there anything in her XLSTART folder? How about Add-ins?

Opening Excel crashes system

In reply to Opening Excel crashes system

There are files in the XLSTART folder. There are also add-ins for Excel as well. How would that cause Excel to crash whenever she logs in and not another user?

Opening Excel crashes system

In reply to Opening Excel crashes system

If only her account is having problems, then there is a configuration problem in the registry. There also could be a dozen different causes in addition to a bad entry in the registry. Look to see what is different from a working account and hers.What programs are started with windows on her account? The invalid page fault is being caused because a module in Excel is requesting an area of memory either being used by another program or is simply unavailable. Digging into the depths of Windows can be like opening Pandora?s box, so sometimes it’s best (and more time efficient) to just reset her account and start fresh. If this is unacceptable, your only solution is to find the differences between an operational account and hers (on the same machine of course). Or wait for a better answer.

Opening Excel crashes system

In reply to Opening Excel crashes system

Thank you for your input. While traipsing through the windows directory earlier I did notice an excel file that at the time I did not take into consideration. But after talking it through with my boss, I went ahead and deleted the “username”.xlb file for the user and it did the trick. Apparently, the file was corrupted and it plays a part in the startup of Excel for a specific user.

Opening Excel crashes system

In reply to Opening Excel crashes system

How much disk space is available on her pc. You may be running out of virtual memory < disk space>. Try deleteing the data in your temp folder. If it opens then you are either short on overall disk space or temp space.

Good luck
Bo

Opening Excel crashes system

In reply to Opening Excel crashes system

There is approximately 450MB of free space on her pc. It doesn’t seem likely that the virtual memory is the cause since 1)she can run many other programs at the same time without the system crashing; only Excel crashes the system; 2)even if Excel is the only program running, it crashes when she’s logged in; 3)only crashes when she’s logged into the pc; two people have logged into her machine with no problems with starting Excel.
And files were deleted from temp folder but there were files inthe temp folder when I logged in and I had no problems. Thanks for your input.

Opening Excel crashes system

In reply to Opening Excel crashes system

If it’s only when logged on as 1 particular user then logon as someone other than her and check her xlstart and other Excel files for macro virii. This sound just like what happened at one of my client’s sites and there were macro virii all over the place.

Glen

Opening Excel crashes system

In reply to Opening Excel crashes system

Thanks for your input. The problem was already solved before your suggestions. See comments in Answer 2 for solution.

Opening Excel crashes system

In reply to Opening Excel crashes system

Is she set up to use a different working directory than the others who are signing in?

Opening Excel crashes system

In reply to Opening Excel crashes system

Thanks for your input once again. But the problem was solved. See Answer 2 comments.

Opening Excel crashes system

In reply to Opening Excel crashes system

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