Microsoft KB Archive/67800

Word 5.00 Installed from Word 5.50 Crashes w/LAN Man, DOS 4.x

PSS ID Number: Q67800 Article last modified on 11-02-1994

5.00 6.00

MS-DOS

= SUMMARY =

If you install Microsoft Word version 5.00 from Word 5.50 with the “Setup 5.0” command, Word 5.00 may crash on start-up with certain configurations involving DOS LAN Manager and DOS 4.00 or DOS 4.01 when one or more network drives are connected.

This problem occurs as Word checks for the presence of removable (floppy) disk drives on your computer. The problem does not occur on all computers running DOS version 4.00 or 4.01 and LAN Manager.

The problem may be avoided by using a different version of DOS or LAN Manager software. If this option is not available, the WORD.EXE file can be patched so that it does not check for removable disk drives.

Note: Verify that the original WORD.EXE has a file size of 627327 bytes before patching the WORD.EXE file.

The patched WORD.EXE file will assume that the A and B drives are floppy disk drives and that all other drives are fixed (logical) disk drives. If the computer has a floppy drive with a designation other than A or B, the patch should not be performed on WORD.EXE (if you do, Word may display incorrect prompts concerning disk drives). The patch to WORD.EXE does not affect other programs running on the computer.

To patch WORD.EXE for use on a DOS machine, do the following:

  Insert the Word 5.50 Setup disk into the floppy disk drive, and copy SETUP.EXE and WORD55.INF from the floppy disk to the Word program directory on your local hard disk.   Insert the Word 5.50 Program 1 disk into the floppy disk drive, and copy WDBF.EX$ from the floppy disk to the Word program directory on your local hard disk.   Decompress WDBF.EX$ with the Setup program by typing the following command at the DOS prompt: setup /d wdbf.ex$ The above command will allow the Setup program to create the uncompressed file, WDBF.EXE (BYTEFIX utility), in the Word program directory. The compressed file (WDBF.EX$) may be deleted from the Word program directory. Note: If your Word 5.50 disks contain files dated 2/1/91, the BYTEFIX utility (WDBF.EXE) is located on the Thesaurus/Sample Files disk (5.25-inch) or the Program 2/Thesaurus disk (3.5-inch). This file is not compressed, so you don’t need to run Setup to decompress it.   Verify that the WORD.EXE file has a size of 627327 bytes. If WORD.EXE has a different size, do not attempt to patch the file. If the file size is correct, enter the following command: wdbf word.exe 30893 “9” 

= MORE INFORMATION =

If the patch to WORD.EXE prevents the proper use of the computer’s floppy disk drives, restore WORD.EXE to its original state with the BYTEFIX utility by entering the following command:

wdbf word.exe 30893 “3”

For more information on using the BYTEFIX utility, type “WDBF” (without the quotation marks) at the DOS prompt without specifying any parameters.

KBCategory: kbsetup kbnetwork KBSubcategory: Additional reference words:

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