Word won't stay open

[Ja Di ksw]

Hello all,
My girlfriend has been having some problems with MS Word lately. For awhile, it was really lagging her (1.25 GHz G4 PB) computer down. This was with only one file open, but to be fair it was over 40 pages. Still, that's just text, it shouldn't be taking up >40% of her CPU (I looked on SysStat in dashboard).

However, now Word will just shut off after being open for about 10 seconds. This is not when her big document is open, it is whenever she tries to work with it. Even if she creates a blank page and just keeps it open for a few seconds, Word quits.

Any ideas why this is happening, or more importantly, how to stop it? Her computer is really lagging lately (even without Word being open, even with nothing or very little going on and SysStat saying not much is being used), but I don't know if that has anything to do with it.

Thank you to everyone for any suggestions.

 

[Blue Velvet]

Have you tried the usual first ideas of trashing the preference file and/or reinstalling the application as well as repairing permissions?

Have you also downloaded and installed any MS Word updaters?

 

[mad jew]

Try moving the file named com.microsoft.Word.plist to the desktop for a while as the voluptuous Blue Velvet implies. If this doesn't help, put it back where you found it.

Try using Activity Monitor rather than SysStat to work out if there's a process using up lots of CPU cycles or RAM. Maybe use Disk Utility to verify the disk too, assuming she has 10.4.3. Repair disk permissions while you're there. If she has an earlier OS, then either start from the OSX disks and run Disk Utility or try fsck instead.