Do you have Microsoft Office 2010 Starter edition and can't get it to
open properly? A customer called the other day with this exact problem.
When they double-clicked on the Word 2010 Starter it came up with the
following error.
WINWORDC.EXE has stopped
working.
A problem caused the program to stop working correctly. Windows will
close the program and notify you if a solution is available.
Talk about a generic error message, no Stop error, blue screen, or
anything else, just a "the program stopped working message" and a Close
button.
I tried the following things to repair the error:
- Repair Office through the Control Panel
- Uninstall and Reinstall Microsoft Office
I even tried removing a few registry entries as detailed below
- Launch the registry editor as Administrator.
a. Click on the Windows Start menu, Type "Regedit" without
the quotation marks. Right click on Regedit and choose "Run as
administrator" and click Yes on the UAC dialog.
- Back up (Export) and then rename the Registry Key if
applicable.
a. Navigate to
[HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-18\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User
Shell Folders]
b. Look at the AppData key in the right pane of the registry
window. If the Data column contains only "%APPDATA%, then
proceed. If not, then do not go any further. Close
the registry editor.
c. Click on the AppData key in the right pane of the registry window,
which should highlight the key.
d. Then click on File, Export and choose a location and name of the
saved original registry key and click the Save button. Don't
forget where you saved it!
e. Double-click on the "AppData" key in the right pane of the registry
window.
f. In the "Value Data" field, change "%APPDATA%" to
“%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming" and click on OK
- Reboot the machine
- Attempt to re-initialize Office Starter again
The Solution
As is turns out, the system had a virus that was causing Microsoft
Office Starter from opening. I downloaded and ran
Combofix
and restarted the machine. After restarting, Microsoft Office 2010
Starter edition was able to open and function normally.