Excel freezes when computer is connected to a network.

[benhsv]

Hi everyone,

My computer is freezing when I try and load Microsoft Excel 2000 Pro. It only does it when connected to the network. If I boot my pc as a stand alone system it works fine... Word, Access and Powerpoint load with no problems.

Computer is PIII 800, 512mb ram, 32mb GeForce2 GTS
Network is Microsoft Networks, TCP/IP, File and print enabled on 3com Fast PNP card.

Anyway ideas would be great,

Thanks.
Ben.

 

[anvil19]

Hey ben

There are a lot of things that need to be looked at when working over a network.

Make sure of your subnet mask, the Gateway address and the DNS & WINS I.P. address are correct. Also, determine the timeout value from your network administrator. this value will stop trying to connect to the network after a space of time, usually 45 seconds.

Do you have network access otherwise. If not I'd check the gateway address first, as it is the address that sends your network requests to other sub-networks on your LAN.

anvil19

 

[benhsv]

Hi all,

I have figured out the problem and solved it. Thought I would post the solution in case someone else encounters a similar problem.

Turns out that Excel has a file in C:\Windows\Application Data\Microsoft\Office\Excel called Excel.xlb. It's a config file for the toolbars and is loaded when excel.exe is run. This file becomes corrupted for whatever reason and prevents the operation of excel when connected to a network. All I did was rename the file to excel.old and then loaded excel in safe mode. To load excel in safe mode do this...

go to start menu and run, then browse to the file excel.exe and add after the inverted commas this switch /s Eg: Your run command should be this "C:\program files\microsoft office\excel.exe" /s

Loading excel in Safe mode creates a new copy of the file and it should run as good as new.

NOTE: This worked for me on Win98 SE running Excel 2000 Pro SR-1, I dont know if it will work for any other operating systems or versions of excel.

Cheers,

Ben.