MS Word shuts down when printing

[FrankSG]

I have Vista Business for my OS. I have two printers--a Konica laser and a HP Deskjet D1320. I have MS Works installed and Office 97. I can print with my laser printer and inkjet using MS Works or MS Word. I can print with with my laser printer using MS Works. But if I open a document with MS Word and try to print with my inkjet printer, Word will just shut down. Has anyone else experienced this?

[Ronjohn@SMMPCR]

Vista Business-Office 97...........

this in itself may pose a great problem. microsoft only states that office 00-07 should be used with vista. I have never heard of anyone having your issue but i have never met anyone who was running office 97 on a vista machine either.

can you print from vista wordpad/notepad and any other vista related text programs?

have you maybe considered running open office on your machine and seeing if that provides a fix to your problem??

if your able to print from other programs but just not your 97 one. i would strongly suggest either upgrading office or using an equivilent vista friendly program.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/932087 Vista compatibility with vista
http://www.openoffice.org/ openoffice download

[FrankSG]

RonJohn--Thanks for your response. Yes, I can print using WordPad and Note Pad. I can print anything, even Excel and Power Point that comes with Office 97. I've had Open Office on here and there is no problem with that. It's just MS Word that I can't print. It's really no problem though since I have MS Works installed and I can use that to print a document. I guess I was just wondering what the problem was. And from the information you have given me, it seems that the problem is the fact that not all of Office 97 is compatible with Vista.

[Ronjohn@SMMPCR]

yeah well i am surprised the office 97 even installed. I had a copy of Norton IS 06 for 9x/2k/xp and on install it was nuked and vista blocked it from installing.

thats not with ever incompatible title, i usually get that pesky "incompatible but do you want to still run" screen but with that one it was striaght blocked

oh well..lol im just rambling now

see ya frank

[classicsoftware]

I will gander a guess that the Inkjet is an HP. This is a common problem that really has no resolution. Office 97 is not supported in Vista. It's amazing everything works with Vista except Word. It's clearly a problem between Word and the OS in handling printer requests as other functions of the program seem to work fine....

You can try updating the driver and see what happens, but I would not be optimistic..

[FrankSG]

I will gander a guess that the Inkjet is an HP. This is a common problem that really has no resolution. Office 97 is not supported in Vista. It's amazing everything works with Vista except Word. It's clearly a problem between Word and the OS in handling printer requests as other functions of the program seem to work fine....

You can try updating the driver and see what happens, but I would not be optimistic..

Yes, the inkjet is an HP. I've downloaded the latest driver sometime ago. I guess I can consider myself lucky since everything else in Office 97 works.

[classicsoftware]

Of all of the complaints I read through, it was clearly a problem with HP printers.

[mjc]

USB connection on the printer?

[FrankSG]

USB connection on the printer?

Yes, it has the USB connection.

[mjc]

What model HP printer?

And do you have some other way of connecting it? Network?

[FrankSG]

What model HP printer?

And do you have some other way of connecting it? Network?

It's a DeskJet D1320 and there is no other way of connecting it that I can see. Earlier this evening I went to HP's website to see if I really did have the latest driver. So I downloaded the latest, installed it but it didn't solve the problem. I have my laser printer set to be my default printer. But when I reinstalled the HP, it changed my setting and made the HP the default printer. I then opened a document with Word and as soon as I clicked on "Print", Word shut down since HP was set as the default. I then changed it so that my laser was the default, opened a document with Word, clicked on print and was given the option of which printer to use. My laser printer was highlighted-and was able to print. Of course it printed with my default printer which was the laser. So I guess it all boils down to the fact that Office 97 is not compatible with Vista; meaning some things might work and other mightl not. My HP printer will not. Computers have a mind of their own, don't they?

[FrankSG]

Oops, I said something in my last post that I want to clarify. When I said My HP printer won't work, I should have added that it won't work only when I try to print a document with MS Word. It works with everything else.

[classicsoftware]

It's a DeskJet D1320 and there is no other way of connecting it that I can see. Earlier this evening I went to HP's website to see if I really did have the latest driver. So I downloaded the latest, installed it but it didn't solve the problem. I have my laser printer set to be my default printer. But when I reinstalled the HP, it changed my setting and made the HP the default printer. I then opened a document with Word and as soon as I clicked on "Print", Word shut down since HP was set as the default. I then changed it so that my laser was the default, opened a document with Word, clicked on print and was given the option of which printer to use. My laser printer was highlighted-and was able to print. Of course it printed with my default printer which was the laser. So I guess it all boils down to the fact that Office 97 is not compatible with Vista; meaning some things might work and other mightl not. My HP printer will not. Computers have a mind of their own, don't they?

The issue is the way the driver interacts with the OS. It must have changed with Vista. I think that's why a great deal of legacy printers did not work with Vista and this is especially true with HP. So the bottom line is you can print in Word 97 with Vista, just not to a certain ink jet printer.

[mjc]

There is a bit more to this than just Word not working correctly. It seems that printer is also problematic under Linux, even with the HP supplied drivers...which basically means that it totally relies upon the Windows drivers for everything, no functions done in 'hardware'.

So.....

That would mean if the two way communication between the printer and Windows ends up garbled or interfered with a crash of the program initiating the print job is likely.

So....

There is no easy fix and most likely will never be one...especially when dealing with software not supported by the OS, like the older versions of Office aren't. Which basically means...don't use that printer to print in Word.

[FrankSG]

So the bottom line is you can print in Word 97 with Vista, just not to a certain ink jet printer.

That is correct.

[a_orrantia]

I was having the exact same problem, but with Windows XP and Office 97. My printer is an HP OfficeJet 6310.

Funny enough, it worked fine initially. Also noticed that when I click on the print icon, Word doesn't crash, but if I print using Ctrl-P, Word shuts down miserably. Interestingly enough, I have 2 users on my XP machine and only one presented this problem.

I deleted the printer and reinstalled it again. Now works fine, but I suspect it's only a matter of time until it fails.

[Pattysd]

The problem you describe has also affected my Word '97, and I was googling to see if anyone else had experienced it. It happened about the same time as your post, after Microsoft Word downloaded a security update. I tried to do System Restore, but the message came up that said "no changes have been made to your computer."
My inkjet printer is also an H-P, so I contacted H-P technical support online, and he suggested untinstalling Word '97 and reinstalling. So I did that yesterday. But it didn't help. Word '97 still closes down when I try to print.
It also closes down when I try to fax.
I'm still able to print using the Works program but that's awkward and Works does not always open up all of my Word files.
Patty

[Pattysd]

P.S. I'm using MS Word '97 with XP. Based on an earlier post, I find that I can now successfully print to my H-P printer using the print icon, but I still can't send a fax (because the fax option is linked to the print option.)