Word 97 Memory

When I have Word 97 open, I cannot "Open" an existing document as a little box opens that says "Word has insufficient memory. Do you want to save document 1 as a rescued document?" Also, I can edit a document but cannot save the edits as I get the same message. This happened a few weeks ago for no reason I can explain.

Subsequently, I have run deep AV with both Norton and McAfee, uninstalled and reinstalled Word 97 (this is a Windows 98 computer, purchased from Dell in the summer of 1999 that had Word 97 as part of its installed software), uninstalled and reinstalled Corel Suite 8, re-booted, checked to insure the system actually has plenty of memory (it does). Finally, I installed a copy of Word 95 so I could have Word-something, and that works fine.

In a related matter, about the same time, a similar thing happened with Outlook Express. I open OE and then double click on an email message and I can't open it. The message reads "There was an error opening this message. There is not enough memory." So to compensate I have been using Netscape and Messanger. This problem happened with OE 5.something. Thereafter I downloaded the most recent IE/Outlook Express combo - and no change.

Can you help?

 

How much disk space do you have in your boot drive? (Usually C)

 

June 8

Thanks for your help.

Re disk space, radiofool, I have 95 megs of RAM and 2 Gigs of hard drive space. This is not the problem, as I had the same disk space before this problem occurred.

Re the two links, xflat, I have been unsuccessful in using them. I agree your 2d link is more relevant. When I tried to follow the directions today, I first found that I had two riched20.dll files. After checking their properties, I determined that one was "original equipment" and the other came in later. Both were modified on 5/15. Whatever caused this modification at that time may have caused my problem.

Not being a "major geek" I wanted to be careful about messing with them. I was able to move the later one into the recycle bin, where it is currently resting. Then, however, I could neither rename nor move the original riched20.dll file. I tried to copy the riched20.dll file from my original equipment CD onto this file, but the system would not let me do this. (The file on the CD had about 1/4 fewer bytes than did the current file, as it was older.)

I did check my Norton 5.0's list of viruses and all the nimda ones are on the list, so later in May when I ran it and it found some virus-infected files and quarantined them, if there was a nimda virus, it found it. (The quarantined files all seemed to be old files - from my quick look - from my daughter's college days, so I just deleted all the quarantined infected files. Upon reflection, I should have kept them in quarantine, so they could be looked at carefully. Nevertheless, the problem persisted after the AV check.)

Perhaps what I need to do is get a "modern" version of the riched20.dll file and replace my current file with that? Any other proposals/suggestions? Remember that I also have this memory problem with my Outlook Express. Would it be caused also by the riched20.dll file?

Thanks for any suggestions anyone can give.

 

June 12. I have been able to solve the problem. Thanks, xflat, for the more relevant link. That, and one other piece to the puzzle, made things work.