I have an auxiliary part-time job: managing Windows 7.  My Dell Inspiron’s warranty expired about the same time that it began having problems:  USB weirdness, spotty sound card issues, random loss of screen image.

So I bought a backup unit to work on when I finally had to send Big Blue to the shop.  It’s another Dell, not as powerful, not as wide = not as heavy.  So it’s ideal for traveling.

But getting it set up for work has been aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaughhhh.  I have reinstalled MS Office twice, downloaded multiple apps, spent 4+ hours on the phone with Microsoft Support (more a good faith gesture than anything else.  I really didn’t expect them to provide solutions.)

So The CatWirks has a new Category here on the blog just so I can remember what I did the next time this happens.

THE IMPORTANT STUFF:

1.  Secure your computer.  Download these apps from majorgeeks.com and run them.  They are my most trusted source for freeware and general tweaking advice.

• Malwarebytes Anti-Malware
• Spybot S&D
• HijackThis

MajorGeeks has a whole section on how to set these up.  It’s at http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=35407

It’s a lot of reading, but it’s quicker than dealing with Microsoft Support.

Do this at night when you’re doing the laundry or something.  You don’t want to try to do this during work hours.  It will send you over the edge.

2. Delete the registry key:  instructions for this is at http://wordprocessing.about.com/od/troubleshootin1/qt/wordregentry.htm

• IF you can’t delete the key, download this tool:  http://www.tweaking.com/content/page/reset_registry_permissions.html

3.  Boot Word and create a new template from scratch.  On a blank document, set your default font, paragraph, etc.  Go to Word Options and set those preferences.  Name it Normal.dotm and remember to select “Word Macro-Enabled Template” in the Save As Type.  Leave it on your desktop.

4.  Navigate to the Templates folder — mine is in C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office.  If you can’t find yours, go back to Word Options\Trust Center\Trust Center Settings\Trusted Locations and you can find the pathway there.

• Close Word.  Rename your Normal.dotm template (the one in the folder, not the one on your desktop) to something like Old.dotm.  Then drag the new Normal.dotm to your Templates folder.
• Delete all the other templates in the folder.  They’re probably screwed up, too, and you can create new ones from Normal.dotm when you get that one working right.

Reboot Word and see if it works.  If it doesn’t, try something else.

P.S. If you bought a version that has “non-commercial use” tattooed into the title bar, here’s a hack for that:

1. Open regedit
2. search for the term “non-commercial”.  Edit them as you wish.
3. Usually you would be all done here, except that the clever folk at Microsoft have the applications reset these registry entries on opening the application, undoing all your good work!
4. Right click on it in the tree, select ‘permissions’, then ‘advanced’, then the username (not system, it is the user who is opening and operating the software) and then ‘edit’. I guessed with this bit and allowed all items to be set to ‘allow’ except ‘Set Value’ and ‘Delete’ which are set to ‘Deny’.
5. Repeat for each user.
6. Seems long-winded but it worked for me!

Source: msmvps.com

via jonathonball

I’ll be adding to this later and rearranging stuff, so stay tuned.  And good luck.