Using Virtual Machine to solve Word problem

Voyager2002

OK, so I run Windows 7 (64-bit) and do a lot of work in Word. I mainly use Office 2000 with Endnote 8, but also have a (legitimate) copy of Office 2007 which I use sometimes (Endnote does not work so well with it).

I find that if I am working in Word and have other applications open (for example Adobe reader, and perhaps an internet browser as well) my whole computer becomes painfully slow. Simply moving down a folder in Windows Explorer to find and open a new Word document can take five minutes, so that doing any serious work is impossible. (I need to refer to stuff in pdf documents in order to write in Word, and I like having a browser open to check details on the internet.)

These problems are particularly acute with Word 2000, but seem to occur as well with Word 2007. I suspect that there is some bug in the way in which these versions of Word run under Windows 7, so I have now used VMWare to create an XP Virtual Machine. My hope is that if I run Word (and Endnote) in the virtual machine then these problems will not be apparent.

Do I need to uninstall Word and then re-install in the virtual XP environment? Or should I just open Virtual Machine in Unity mode and run from there?

Or perhaps there is a completely different solution that I am missing.

(And no, it is unlikely to be a hardware issue. I run a modern Sony Vaio with adequate RAM and processing power, that came with Win 7 pre-installed.)

S0litaire

First what's the laptop model number?

Also it might be a simple thing of clearing out the cache.

How many tabs do you have open at one time? less than 5? or more than 10?

Have you tried Libre Office instead of Word? see if the problem still happens?

in my opinion using a Virtual machine will make things worse since the laptop has to run the virtual machine as well as the other programs.

Voyager2002

S0litaire wrote: »

First what's the laptop model number?

Also it might be a simple thing of clearing out the cache.

How many tabs do you have open at one time? less than 5? or more than 10?

Have you tried Libre Office instead of Word? see if the problem still happens?

in my opinion using a Virtual machine will make things worse since the laptop has to run the virtual machine as well as the other programs.

The laptop is a VPCEH, about a year old.

No, it is not a simple thing of cleaning out the cache. Before the warranty expired I contacted Sony technical support and did everything they suggested, even wiping everything off the computer and re-installing, which made absolutely no difference. I ran various diagnostic tests and did not pick up any problems.

I tend to have two or three tabs open, although at one stage I was running both Chrome and Firefox at the same time, and that really did slow things down.

I am locked into Word because I need to use it together with Endnote, and I don't think that Endnote interfaces with any other word-processor. Anyway, I have built up skills in getting Word to do what I want and would hate to lose those.

Good thought about the downside of running a virtual machine, but it is hard to believe that I am pushing my computer anywhere near its capacity. If the issue is something to do with how Word interacts with Windows 7, then eliminating that interaction ought to help.

S0litaire

endnote does integrate with Libre Office.

Also what else is running? Anti-virus? Backup software? Cloud Services (DropBox??)

TrickyDicky101

Do things improve if rather than using Windows Explorer to navigate your folders you use the Open dialog in Word itself?

EDIT: You're not using a VPN at the same time are you? That causes me massive issues with Windows Explorer (but doesn't impact the Open dialogs in the Office apps)

Johnmcl7

There's certainly no harm in trying a Windows XP VM, it may turn out to be a more workable solution if you have sufficient cores and ram. When you say you wiped everything and reinstalled it, did that include the OS and if so was it a clean build? My immediate thought on reading your post is that Sony's Windows 7 base builds were terrible (as were their Vista and XP base builds, the Windows 8 ones seem fine from what I've seen) leading to intermittently poor performance. The difficulty with an XP VM is that it's a different OS and a clean build so if performance is fine, you won't know which was the solution.

All that said I do have a friend that runs Office 2000 on a Vista x64 Vaio which seems to generally work fine so there should be a way to get it working properly.

Have you done much in the way of performance monitoring? (cpu/ram/HDD or SSD read/writes etc.)

John

I_have_spoken

Or perhaps there is a completely different solution that I am missing.

An XP guest OS seems overkill

But what do you mean be 'adequate' RAM and is it all recognised on boot-up? Can you test it from the Vaio BIOS?

Other than that, try setting the properties of Word 2000 .exe so it runs in XP compatibility mode (NOT the same as a VM)

Also, I assume Sony stuffs their machines with cr*pware, so I'd blow away Macafee, Norton, Avast etc. etc. that are now doing more harm than good and just use Windows firewall and Windows Security Essentials.