JorgeA

dencorso (and @BlouBul), Sorry I turned out to be out of touch today. I am up against a Monday deadline for yet another large project, and it'll be hard to get back in here for quality troubleshooting till then. But to answer your question, Norton 360 does have an option to scan Office documents as they're opened. Having had experience with that feature on my Win98 tower and Norton Internet Security, I made sure to make that one of the first things that I turned OFF when I first installed N360 on the Vista. All the tests you've seen, have been with that virus check disabled. And indeed, my PC does seem to be behaving in inconsistent and even surprising ways. One other bit of news: the 1TB external HDD arrived today. But I'm not sure that I'll be able to log on regularly over the next few days. I'm promising Monday... Thanks for continuing to investigate this weird issue! --JorgeA

Welcome to our knotty problem! Thanks for the questions. Yes, Office 2007 is fully up to date. The changes made to the system by Norton 360 are so extensive, that I'm ruling out uninstalling it as an option. Even if that turned out to be the source of the problem, I'm not willing to spend the time eradicating it completely and then reinstalling and re-registering it all over again. I truly would rather wait a couple of extra minutes for the occasional huge Word file to finish loading, than go through that process again. However, I suspect that N360 is not really the issue. The test file we've been working on is taking less than half a minute to load if I click to open it from outside Word, while if I'm already inside Word it's taking from 2 to 5 minutes to finish loading. Whatever is going on, seems to have to do with how Word handles the files in one scenario vs. the other. Glad to have another mind working on this! --JorgeA

BlouBul, Before I start, and possibly do it the wrong way -- With how many grammar/spelling settings turned ON do you want me to open the original big file from outside Word? There are so many different variables to juggle! --JorgeA

dencorso, Will do. Give me an hour or two as I need to get some lunch and attend to other things. The computer won't be doing anything in particular in the meantime, so it shouldn't be opening or closing processes that could screw up the comparison. Do you want me to open the C# file with two settings on, from inside Word or from outside Word? --JorgeA

BlouBul, O.K., here are the values for the series opening the C# file from outside Word, with the three settings OFF: 0:27 0:25 0:26 0:27 0:24 0:25 0:25 Hope this helps! --JorgeA

dencorso, I've been using the C# file that BlouBul proposed. As I said to BlouBul, I'm just as befuddled about this as you. Check out the newest dataset in my post to him, and see if they help to sort things out. I'll be curious to hear what you have to say. --JorgeA

BlouBul, I just ran the 7 loadings series for the C# file, from OUTSIDE Word. Here are the times: 0:25 0:27 0:27 0:27 0:27 0:25 0:26 Then, before doing anything else so that the PC would be in the same condition, I re-ran the series for the same C# file, from INSIDE Word, and here are the times for that: 2:24 0:25 (not a typo) 0:27 (ditto) 2:28 2:19 2:46 2:21 All of these were done with the three grammar/spelling checks ON. The times are from clicking on the file till the page counter shows the last page. Yup, I am as confused as you and dencorso. One thing I've noticed is that, for the fast times, the page counter stays unchanged showing nothing, and then changes in a flash to "Page 1 of 519." Whereas for the slow times, the page counter inches along in 3-page increments (Page 1 of 3, Page 1 of 6, Page 1 of 9, ...) and then, at an unpredictable point, the numbers start zooming up fast till they reach the last page. Let me know if you can glean anything out of this. --JorgeA

BlouBul, Excellent work, putting all this together!! This way we can all get a much clearer idea of what's going on. I do have an amendment to the data. As far as I can tell, I've never had the setting for "check spelling as you type" turned on. So my values are for having two settings on, and all settings off. I'll do a run with all three settings turned on, and report. --JorgeA UPDATE: The times for the sample file with all three settings turned ON (Vista x64, from inside Word) were, in chronological order: 3:38, 5:14, 3:02, 1:35, 2:16, 2:17, 2:09. Very strange -- they were all over the place. Nothing was running at the start of the series that wasn't also running at the end.

BlouBul, Interesting. I have "check grammar" and "mark grammar errors" checked off, but not "check spelling." Your new values are much closer to mine now, though they're still a lot better of course. <raising hand> I have a Vista x64! --JorgeA

I got the same settings, but no animation in Word 2010. BlouBul, Do you mean that you're not getting the animation either way, with those settings turned on OR off? If so, then maybe that helps to account for some of the difference in loading time. --JorgeA

Hey BlouBul, That's right, disabling the grammar check didn't seem to make a difference for me. But, just to make sure, I'll try it again a couple of times in case I screwed that up too. Doubt it, but it won't hurt to check. Let's make sure I am doing this right, or at least the same way everybody else is doing it. In order to turn off grammar and spell check when I open a document, I need to go into Word Options, select Proofing, and then uncheck "Mark grammar errors as you type" and "Check grammar with spelling," right? Or is there something else that I need to change? Doing it that way just now, the file took 4:49, 3:16, 2:31, 2:28, and 2:31 to load (that is, for the display on the lower left that says "Page 1 of xxx" to get to the last page of my big file, 501) from within Word. The animation that puntoMX described isn't showing (it does when I have those settings selected). Loading three times immediately thereafter with grammar and spelling check turned back on, yielded the following values: 4:13, 4:10, and 4:42. So now it's looking pretty clear that it does make a difference, and I may have to amend my view that turning these features off didn't shorten the loading time appreciably. So, why didn't it have any effect the first time?! For all the problem-solving brilliance I've demonstrated, maybe I should take my vacation in Greece and buy some government bonds there off the street. Hopefully, though, these new results will help us in SOME way. --JorgeA

puntoMX, Oh man, I do need a vacation... --JorgeA

BlouBul, Well, I got myself completely discombobulated here. Been a hectic couple of weeks, workwise, and I was trying to get in some more work while testing the file on the laptop. So I wasn't paying full attention to what I was doing , going back and forth among computers, and I labeled the column wrong on the paper where I was jotting down the results. Works, Word... The times for my own laptop were for Microsoft Works, like the Works trial that I ran on my Vista tower. But they are obviously much slower. (FWIW, it too is Vista x64.) Because I do use it for business when traveling, the laptop is crammed with all sorts of security stuff running automatically (Norton, Spybot, Windows Defender, SASW). When at home I tend to set it aside and forget about it till the next time I have to take it with me. But because of all the different anti-spyware combinations that -- in my paranoia about going online at hotels -- I have tried and discarded on it, no doubt it could also use some good and thorough registry maintenance. I deeply apologize for confusing matters. We have compared apples to apples. Now, if we compare "oranges to oranges" and I measure the file loading time on the Vista tower the same way you were doing it (to when the file first comes up on the screen), the reading drops to 7 seconds. Go figure. One other thing (we HAVE been throwing around a lot of data). The Win98 tower that loaded the file in 40 seconds, does have Norton Internet Security (AV and firewall) installed on it. Whew! Hope this helps to clear things up. --JorgeA

puntoMX, Welcome back! A question -- that 1:17 time reading, was it for loading the file from inside or outside Word? --JorgeA

Well, currently, the "museum OS" is the fastest of the lot Amazing, isn't it!

BlouBul, Interesting that you should mention graphics. The big file that got this whole thing started does include a healthy portion of graphical elements. That said, I do have a couple of files with no text but hundreds of photographs (crudely assembled in Word before I learned how to organize them in more suitable software) which are hundreds of MB in size and yet open faster than my big document. --JorgeA

BlouBul, Thanks very much for the test file. I've run the tests, and here are the results. Because of a certain phenomenon, I'm going to list the values in chronological order, rather than from the least time to the most time. These are for loading times from within Word: 2:49 2:25 3:14 3:33 4:44 5:43 4:28 Curiously, each new time that I opened the file, it took longer to load. Sounds like some weird kind of memory effect. Now, for even more interesting results, check out the loading times for the following trial series, run from outside Word: 0:29 0:31 0:25 What?!? Remember that my own big file doesn't experience this wild inside/outside divergence in loading times. Now, to answer your other questions. My laptop doesn't have Word on it, but my friend's laptop does. That laptop is a Vista x64 with Win32 Office 2007, and Norton 360. My wife's tower PC (it's not a laptop) has Windows 7 64-bit, with Win32 Office 2007, and Norton Internet Security (not 360). My Vista x64 tower is a Pentium Dual CPU E2200 (2.2GHz) with 4GB RAM, Win32 Office 2007, Norton 360, and Spybot Search & Destroy 1.6.2. One last thing, just so that we are all comparing apples to apples. I'm measuring "loading time" from the moment that I click to open the file (whether from inside or outside Word), till the moment that the page count display at the bottom left shows the full range of pages for that file. (I have found that starting to work before it's done can be very distracting.) I'm eager to get your thoughts on all this! --JorgeA

dencorso, Thanks for the explanation. I thought it was something like that, but it's good to have it confirmed. About the differences in traffic, it's actually pleasing that the section dedicated to a "museum" OS like Win98 would actually get more traffic. Still a lot of fans out there... --JorgeA

Yes about a 1:10 ratio with replies:views. Over 1400 people viewed this (ok, *maybe* some viewed it more than once ) with only about six people replying over the lifetime of this thread. Either people really don't know or they don't want to help us, or they don't read this. For the record: We do welcome outside input!!! We got more people to reply in the hardware section. No new people replied since we moved. Hi BlouBul, I'm thinking that maybe there are a lot of people out there with a similar problem, who don't know what to do about it and are looking for solutions in this thread. So our efforts are (hopefully) helping to guide other people. But you're right -- while the thread does now belong here (since the thrust of it has shifted), no one new to it has jumped in since it was moved. --JorgeA

BlouBul, All right, it was in the second link that people were complaining that Word was taking 10 minutes just to launch. Fortunately I haven't reached the 10-minute stage launching Word OR opening a file. By now I'd probably have taken a hammer to the PC... At least I discovered that my second HDD on the WfW3.11 system was having a problem being written to from the network -- asking for a nonexistent password -- and I delved into the OS's workings to fix the problem. If you hadn't asked about loading that big file on Word 6.0, I wouldn't have either discovered the problem or fixed it. So, thank you! BTW, have you noticed the "Views" count on this thread?? --JorgeA

jaclaz, Wow, thanks very much! Now you know what I'll be doing this weekend... I had no idea there was such a wide choice in PDF software. Before this week I had thought it was Adobe (yuck) and just a couple of minor competitors. Gratefully, --JorgeA

BlouBul, Thanks again for these further links! I read through both of them. Norton does seem to stay in the picture as a possible suspect. We should note that the trouble I'm having with Word is with very large files, not with opening the program as such -- that's completed in a few seconds. (In the first link, people were reporting that Word was taking 10 minutes just to launch the program.) The patterns is that the bigger the file, the longer it takes to load. Which reminds me that I still have to try loading the file with grammar check disabled (assuming there is a way to do that). Rats -- I just checked, and all of my large files are proprietary or confidential documents from my customers! My own Word documents are small. So I can't help there. I'll get back to you when I convert the file to Word 6.0, and also test loading the file without grammar check. And I *am* curious as to why the x64/x86 nomenclature -- I will definitely read that, thank you! --JorgeA UPDATE: I turned off Word's automatic grammar and spell check, then loaded the file three more times. Surprisingly, didn't seem to make a difference: 3:08, 4:04, 5:13. (I verified that the checks were in fact disabled.) So we can eliminate that as a factor. UPDATE 2: I don't have an option to save files in Word 6.0 format -- its place in the "other formats" list appears to have been taken by Open Office format. I saved it as an RTF, which looks like it's the only other format (other than text) that my Word 6.0 will read, but the resulting file is 114MB in size so I doubt that any loading time measurements will be comparable. I suppose I could load the RTF file on both computers, but I'm not sure if you or dencorso would consider the results meaningful.

Hi JorgeA, I do not know if the documents are confidential, otherwise you can maybe edit the confidential parts out and upload it somewhere, then we can test it on different systems. Well, try saving it as Word 6 file and see what happens http://www.java2s.com/Tutorial/Microsoft-Office-Word-2007/0040__Editing/Word2007SaveFileFormats.htm The second last one on the list. BlouBul, Thanks for another really useful link! I will try converting the file, and report on the results. But on the other suggestion, I'm not authorized to upload the big file (or any part of it) for viewing by the general public. --JorgeA

Hi BlouBul, Well, you cornered me into researching just what "x86" means. When you first brought it up, my reaction was, "I'm not using an 80486 CPU, let alone an 80386, 80286, or 8086, so this doesn't have anything to do with me." But then you and dencorso kept bringing it up, as if such systems still mattered today -- which led me to wonder why up-to-date folks such as yourselves would even think about "x86." So I had to look into the topic to see what you meant. If I understand it correctly, "x86" is a reference to 32-bit OS's (so why aren't they simply called "x32" now for consistency?) If I got that right, then I can say that my Vista tower and my wife's Win7 are not x86, they are x64. So is my friend's Vista laptop. I converted the file to .docx format and opened it in Word on my Vista x64 tower. While the size of the .doc file is 7.0MB, the .docx version is 6.04MB. I ran a trial series of five file loadings. The times were: 2:17 3:56 3:58 4:19 4:19 Doesn't seem to make a great difference whether it's .doc or .docx. Also, I looked at the box in which my Microsoft Office CD came, and the label says "Win32" in tiny letters. I don't know if a 64-bit version was available when I bought it, at the same time as the computer (December '08), not that I would have understood the difference back then. (I like to think that today I'm a bit more knowledgeable about computers.) My wife's Office 2007 is also Win32, according to her CD box. What do you think? What effect could there be from the 32/64 bit issue? --JorgeA

No issues with either (that's why I recommended them ) Well you got 4 options now (I also do not think you will have issues with the other two (since it was suggested by jaclaz)). Why don't you see which looks the best (based on specs and/or price/availability) and download the trial and see if it works. I personally think Nitro is good for editing and converting (but haven't tried the other two yet) BlouBul, I'll definitely do that. In the next few days I'll be having to select out pages from a PDF, so it will be a good opportunity to try out at least one of these packages. Thanks for the recommendation! --JorgeA