Grandma's Comp!

[Bobo23]

HELP!

My grandmother is VERY computer illiterate.
She is having trouble with Microsoft Word. From what she told me I've deciphered that she double clicks on it and it opens then instantly minimizes. She is then unable to get it to open up again. I told her to click on the minimized box on the start bar.

I talked her through reinstalling it and it still doesn't work

She has a HP Pavilion w/ Genuine Intel x86 (what is this? a 486?) about 2 years old. She has windows 98 and she doesn't know if its SE or not.

HELP!
I can't be there to do this for her since she lives 800 miles away and I can't figure out whats wrong without actually seeing her computer.

Also her Floppy drive died and she has had a HP customer service man replace it twice but it still doesn't work. So now they are going to replace her motherboard. For all I know it could just be that the cable is backwards but they are gonna completely replace the most important part of the system! What do you recommend I do.

[Bobo23]

almost forgot, it doesn't seem like it should be a 486 (x86) since its only 2 years old and Pentium has been around since '93.

[Cricket]

Hi Bobo23,

Can't help you with your Grandma's dilemma, but Intel uses the x86 designation for all their CPU's (I'm not sure about the P4's though). It refers to the "family" of processors being used. The 286, 386, 486, Pentium, PII, PIII, Celeron and Celeron II are all part of the same x86 family of processors. Your Grandma probably has a PIII or Celeron, around 600MHz (give or take).

:) Cricket

[archie]

Could it be that instead of 'it instantly minimizes' means that it opens up 'not maximized'?

[Bobo23]

OK, Cricket,
Usually in Control Panel you click System and it will give you general information including the NAME, but not speed of the processor. Instead of Pentium or Celeron or 80486 or anything it just said "Genuine Intel x86" meaning I now have no clue what processor she has. I could get her to look in her BIOS or startup Messages but that will be difficult to explain over the phone.

Archie, I'm not there to see, but apparently she double clicks the icon and then the box on the start bar appears but the desktop remains. I have tried having her click it, right click it and pick restore, etc. i even had her reinstall it. I'm clueless beyond that, I don't like dealing with Microsoft stuff. (The lost me thousands!!!! :( in stock) Oh well. Help me out if you can otherwise i'll help her in March when i go there.

[christo418]

I have a good idea - get her signed up for the forums!;)
But seriously, most communities have some sort of outlet for senior citizens to learn computers in a comfortable setting with their peers, whether that be a senior citizen outreach center, or attached to a local community college.

[Polymorphus]

What version of Word is it she is using and does she have the entire office suite installed? I have had problems with Office 2000 doing some weird things such as opening the application (Any of them) then getting booted out to the desktop. These problems I had determined were caused by screwed registry entries, or if you are using a dodgy copy of Office. You can either edit the registry yourself and change around product ID codes under the uninstall registry entry for the offending software or do a complete uninstall and re-install of Office. This would mean having to manually remove registry entries yourself once the software has been removed and removing any orphaned files left behind from the uninstall process since it isn't 100% accurate and removing it. I know that Microsoft has a program for Office 2000 called eraser2k which will automatically clean up the registry and orphaned files on a Windows 2000 machine. Not sure how much use this info is to you if at all, but if you can check out the Microsoft site you should be able to find enough info to completely remove the app.

[Bobo23]

She has 97, and I think its Office 97. She is really dense, not just when it comes to this. I think i know the problem though. If something is minimized, you sometimes have to click it twice to get it to open, or right click and press Restore. I didn't realize this since I wasn't there.

[Carl Price]

This is only a guess, but is there a macro file autoplaying upon entrance to Word.

[Bobo23]

possible. Again, i am not there to be able to find out, and also, I dont think she could find out either (she doesn't know anything, even what the start button is or control panel, she doesn't even know how to double click, or isn't capable (old age in the fingers))

It may be like i said above, that she has to right click then click restore