W98SE, MS Word, and ERROR Message

[Kubie]

I have a Gateway Solo laptop with a Celeron cpu, 160mb ram, and 6gb HDD.
It has Win98SE and Office 2000 Pro.
Problem:
When MS Word is clicked, I get a BSOD with an error message about the fatal exception occured in OE at 0187:BFF9DFFF which requires a Ctrl+Alt+Del.
Instead of shutting down the program, I get a message that the system resources are dangerously low and do I want to terminate the program. The only way to get out of that loop is to unplug the pc.

I've done searches on Google, the MS KB and here. Can't find any solution. I have uninstalled Office and reinstalled also. No Help.
I did a memory test and am now in the process of running a Scandisk to check for bad sectors.
I can use Power Point and Excel without a problem.
Has anyone seen this problem or have an answer on how to clear it up? I may have to reinstall the O/S but would rather not have too.

TIA
Carl

[glc]

Often, Word errors can be fixed by deleting normal.dot. The low resources message doesn't make sense though unless you have a runaway process. Are you confirmed spyware and virus free? What exact antivirus do you have? Many packages have Office 2000 plugins which can go squirrely at times.

[Kubie]

Hi GLC,
What a coincidence! I just found the "NORMAL.DOT" fix. When I found the file in C:Windows, there were actually 3 of them. I deleted 2 of them and renamed the 3rd one NORMAL.OLD and rebooted. MS Word works fine now.
One of the things that is taking alot of resources on this pc is Norton's Internet Security 2005. He has never updated it which I am doing now.
Maybe when it is time for renewal, I can talk him out of this bloatware.
Thanks GLC

Carl

[glc]

That's one with a plugin. It can be disabled if necessary.

[Kubie]

OK G!
Thank you again.

Carl

[oldun]

I've had the exact same problem for the last month and tried everything I could to fix it , with no luck. till I spotted your entry. I tried the same solution and Magic! it worked. I deleted three or four 'normal.dot' files and named the remaining one normalold.dot .thanks to the forum and glc for providing a solution. It is important that any anti-virus or probably any other running program should be disabled before attempting to re- install the Word program.

oldun.