Word slow when switching between documents

[Block306]

I run Word and has Acrobat Professional 7 installed on my pc as well. I have
the same set-ups on my desktop and laptop. Both runs on WinXP SP2.
On my desktop, when using Word, I noticed that my system slows down when I
switched from one Word document to another word document (or other
applications for that matter). My desktop will hang with the hour glass for
at least 15 seconds whenever I does that. The same problem does not arise in
my laptop.
I have checked all the places that I know of to check (options etc) but to
no avail.
Can someone please advise? Thanks.

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

This is a classic sign that you do not have enough "Memory" in the computer.

Talk to your system administrator about adding RAM to your desktop PC.

On 31/3/06 3:22 PM, in article
C322B23D-C687-4B85...@microsoft.com, "Block306"
<Bloc...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <jo...@mcghie.name>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Consultant Technical Writer
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

[Block306]

Thanks, John but that is definitely NOT THE problem. I have a 1 Gb RAM and
the problem happens even if I have NO other windows open.

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Yeah. I agree that it's unlikely to be a RAM issue if you have 1 GB of RAM.

However, do me a favour and have a look in Control panel>System and see if
all of that RAM is still responding... I had to replace a motherboard
recently because it kept spitting out one stick of RAM, effectively cutting
me back to half the installed RAM.

When you say "no other windows open", how many other "applications" do you
have open? If Word is the only application open, and even if only half your
RAM is responding, it should still switch windows briskly.

OK, we're going to have to get scientific here. Open Task Manager, set up
graphs for CPU and Disk Paging and watch what's going on when you switch
from one app to the other.

If it's pounding the disk, chances are it's paging, which means "something"
is gobbling the available memory. If it's maxing the CPU, chances are the
AntiVirus is going off its head.

We could sit around guessing about what it "might" be all night: we need to
go look :-)

Cheers

On 1/4/06 6:02 PM, in article
392E64C2-6479-462D...@microsoft.com, "Block306"

[Bioatty]

Dear John,
I have experienced the same problem (my home computer switches instantly
between documents; my dual core work station (1 GB of Ram) takes several
seconds to switch. I will check the RAM availability. When I run task
master, I see a huge spike of activity (20-40% CPU used for 1-2 seconds each
time the document is switched. HP says they have no idea why.

[Bioatty]

Dear John,
When I looked into the Task manager, I found that at times 60% of memory was
in use. I disabled Adobe Version Cue to reduce memory load to around 35%.
On the hope that you were correct about memory being the problem, I upgraded
the memory to 2 GB. Memory usage is now low, but the problem is unchanged,
so memory is not the problem. I also disabled Norton 2006 AV and NIS, but
these changes also had no effect.

[petersie]

Guys,
This has started happening on my Vaio laptopn in the last 10 days. Was fine
before. Unsure what I might have done.
Did anyone find out definitively what the problem was?
Thanks.

[Beth Melton]

If you have Adobe installed, uninstall or disable the PDFMaker add-in - it's
known to cause this behavior.

Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email can not be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Co-author of Word 2007 Inside Out:
http://www.microsoft.com/MSPress/books/9801.aspx#AboutTheBook

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/

"petersie" <pete...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:E4D82DD7-7154-4DCD...@microsoft.com...

[QSurvey]

[QSurvey]

Well here we go again. I am a new user and exactly the same has happened to
me. I cannot multi task with even just two Word documents open. It is
hopeless. I have 2GB of RAM and only two docs open and have to wait for
re-paging. I turned off auto- save because that also bugged me.
What is the problem Microsoft?

[Graham Mayor]

Are we to assume that you don't have Acrobat (and if you do, applying the
latest updates may be more appropriate than disabling it)? What other
add-ins do you have? If the documents need to paginate, and this is causing
long delays, how large are they? There will always be an issue with
pagination in huge documents, so work in Normal/Draft mode with background
pagination switched off until you need to repaginate.

There is no 'auto save' in Word - only the autosaving of recovery
information, which in the event of a crash can recover the document(s) you
were working on.

Over-zealous virus checkers can be a problem also.

--
<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>><<>
Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org

[barbar...@gmail.com]

The solution suggested by Beth is the correct one, it is not a RAM issue.
I was looking from year a solution to this problem, when I disabled the Adobe add-in the switching between documents became fast.

[jerome...@gmail.com]

Well, for me it appeared to be the Google drive addin!
I disabled it, and now it seems to have gone back to normal!

[cgrisw...@gmail.com]

I had the same issue as everyone else. the problem was resolved by signing out of Google Drive in MS-word. I'm guessing it was syncing every time I switched documents.