How to – inhibit failure reports (xp)

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(I’ve searched “fail, report, details, error” and can’t find any references that satisfy)

Is there any way at all to inhibit Word’s annoying (to me) habit of going through the look-at-me-I’m-clever business of recovering from errors?

From time to time Word crashes, and since I have a dozen or so templates in my startup folder, I have to wait while Word painstakingly recovers them all, announces that is has recovered them, and then presents me with a list of templates that I might elect to save. This after saying yet again that I don’t want Word to report its naughtiness back to Microsoft.

My startup templates are copies from my production folder; reinstallation is a snap for me. I couldn’t care less if the startup got corrupted. I trust Word’s recovery after failure less than I do Word’s performance immediately before the failure.

I’d like to go back to the old-fashioned message that said something like “Ooops!”, without Word assuming that I’m a nephyte word-processing clerk.

Has anyone found a way to permanently disable this feature?

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You can clear the check box Save Auto Recover Information in the Save tab of Tools | Options. But this is an all or nothing setting – if you crash, you will lose the document you were working on too.

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> Save Auto Recover Information in the Save tab of Tools | Options

Thanks, Hans, but that’s already cleared.

I have a policy of saving my work just before a major change (Alt-F, S) and saving my work immediately after a change that has worked (Alt-F,S), so that i take saving my work as my responsibility.

That’s mainly whi I’ve never liked Word taking care of recovery – I’d rather go back to my last known GOOD copy, than struggle with a recovered copy that probably had corruption that caused the failure in the first place.

The thing I’m trying to disable is the panel that comes up on the Left-hand side after failure, with a list of one or more files that have been recovered (It says something like “Check the ones you want to save” or similar).

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I’m sorry, if clearing AutoRecover doesn’t work, I don’t know what does.

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Well, as you can see, I *was* considering a second option …..

Next time it happens I’ll remmeber to snapshot a pic. and add it to this thread.

(Thurs 20th 10pm EST: here is a series of four events)

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You might try, cleaning out ALL of the “temp” files that are in the folder(s) that was in use when the crash happens. This is what Word is trying to recover.

DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

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> might try, cleaning out ALL of the “temp” files

That’s a good thought – except that this error-recovery take splace before I can get there.

That’s not quite true; I suppose I could Alt-Tab to explorer and delete any ~*.* files I could find.

What’s bugging me is that one second I’m tapping merrily away, and the next second I’m kneed deep in Word’s “shall we send an email aco###### of what happened?” and “just look at all the files you weren’t actually using, which I’ve recovered!”.

I’d rather just quit right out of Word and reload Word myself, without a have dozen files called “procs.dot (“recovered”)” to be cared for, one by blessed one.

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The “Location” box under Tools>Options>File Locations>AutoRecover Files is set to the startup folder – if the location is changed will that eliminate the problem?

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> if the location is changed will that eliminate the problem?

Another nice try, but somehow I doubt it.

I already had this location pointing to “C:___Spare”, which is where I move files I don’t want. My startup location is C:GreavesStartupWord. My Startup and Autorecover locations are already separate.

Please see also my immediately previous response.

I’m accustomed to Word crashing and seeing detritus lying around in the form of half-baked files, tilde files, BAK filess etc. In a way, that’s not a problem.

It’s this new-fangled disaster-recovery scheme that MSoft seems to have built around itself.

(In a separate thread we might discuss just how MSoft would cope with life if we all sent Details of every crash …..)

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Word’s error box which asks “do you want to report” has a checkbox towards the top asking if you want Word to attempt recovery? The default is set to be checked but you can uncheck it before you tell them that you like your privacy, thank you very much. I’m not 100% certain if this will abort it’s attempt at recovering the startup templates, but I think it might.

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> checkbox towards the top asking if you want Word to attempt recovery?

Karen, thanks for this response. I recall the check box of which you speak and have checked it off. I’d thought that that was the end of it, yet still I get these voluminous and click-consuming reports. I had one about an hour ago. I had a series at a client site this afternoon – different machine, different instalaltion.

If I thought I saw a HINT of getting rid of them, I would check it off.

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I did a bit of checking on TechNet — the recovery process and report are created by the dw.exe file. While you can run a admin template (available in the ORK) through the Windows group policies snap-in to set policies directing that the information gathered is directed to a local tree folder (I knew this much because we do this at our office) or altering the user interface so that it automatically sends the report, there is no mention anywhere of using the policies to completely disable executable. I don’t know what the impact of disabling (or even renaming) dw.exe would be or how deep it is rooted in the system, but it may be worth a gander. Although I suspect that since it’s part and parcel of the MSOffice installation Office may attempt to repair itself if it doesn’t locate the file on crash and require you to have the installation CD handy.

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> the recovery process and report are created by the dw.exe file

Karen, thanks.

A search of my hard drive reveals only this:

C:ApplInstalledVBNetDisk1Program FilesMicrosoft Visual Studio .NETCommon7IDEdw.exe

and despite the path, VB.NET has not (yet) been installed. This DW.EXE appears to be sitting on an installation disk.

Nonetheless, there seems (to me) little harm in renaming it temporarily, and this I will do.

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I have a policy of saving my work just before a major change (Alt-F, S) and saving my work immediately after a change that has worked (Alt-F,S), so that i take saving my work as my responsibility.

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[/indent] And that’s great. But how many of the millions of (non guru) users have a policy such as this? I too save regularly, backup on a regular basis, etc., but I can also overlook this on occasion and having an “insurance policy” such as this in place is rather reassuring. If and when Word does crash (and I’ve not had this experience with W2003), I do have the option of recovering the major part of a document. I think I would be more disturbed if this feature was not included.

As far as sending crash reports to MS, do you not think it possible that MS actually uses these reports to document flaws in the software and to attempt to provide solutions to these flaws in future releases or SP’s? Is it fair to condemn MS for possibly trying to improve a product? We all have the “do not send report” option.

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> If and when Word does crash

Here’s the rub: The time and effort I spend in telling Word that i *don’t* want any recovered files far outweighs the time I spend doing a File, Save from time to time.

I have no problem with people who want to use this feature. I have a problem with having it foisted on me. If I’ve elected to take a professional approach to being responsible for my work, I ought not to be dragged down to the level of people who think a File, Save is what you do before you go to bed.

I don’t believe MS has set aside the resources properly to analyse the gazillions of reports that would wend their way were we all to send these reports every time Word crashes.

I can’t believe that whatever problems I have are unique to me, whether they are document corruption, memory leak or whatever. Besides, MS has a history of NOT fixing bugs in Word, merely adding new glossies like this to impress the sales people.

Back to the purpose of this thread: How to inhibit this auto-recovery? Do you have any suggestions?

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To disable the “error reporting”, Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 325075 gives the procedure. As for the Autorecover feature, the only way I know to disable it was outlined in Hans’ post , but you say it doesn’t work for you. Are your Service Packs up to date (SP3)?

I don’t mean to sound patronizing, but if in fact “The time and effort i spend in telling Word that i *don’t* want any recovered files far outweighs the time I spend doing a File, Save from time to time”, I think I’d be inclined to try to discover the causes behind these unusually frequent crashes. Personally, I would find the crashes more annoying and disconcerting than the option to recover.

Any software producer “foists” some feature or another upon us which we don’t like or don’t use, but as consumers, we ultimately have the choice of purchasing the product or rejecting the product. I don’t know of any software producer who distributes one version of a product for those with a “professional approach” and another version for the rest of the populace.

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I don’t know of any software producer who distributes one version of a product for those with a “professional approach” and another version for the rest of the populace.

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[/indent] How about these?
Microsoft Office Professional Edition
Microsoft Office Standard Edition

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The products in the Standard Edition are identical to those in the Professional Edition. The Pro version simply has additional applications.

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I Know, I was just kidding…

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> Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 325075 gives the procedure

John, thanks for this link. I read through it and note that I do not have the stated key (HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwarePoliciesMicrosoftOffice10Common). A full serach on “Policies” turns up lots of them, but not one embracing Office10. I serached too for “DWNeverUpload” and found nada.

Would you recommend that I just go ahead and create that key & value?

>try to discover the causes behind these unusually frequent crashes

That’s why these pop-up recovery boxes are so annoying. At the time the system fails (most likely cause some form of bad data in a client document or shoddy program code of mine), I want to get on with determining just what caused the hiccough. Clicking on these seemingly endless windows distracts me from determining the primary trigger of the problem.

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That you can’t find the key means that there is no policy for Office set on your PC. You can create the key(s) yourself in RegEdit.

BTW I suspect that it should be …Office10.0… since that is the way Microsoft usually refers to Office XP.

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>At the time the system fails … I want to get on with determining just what caused the hiccough

Maybe instead of disabling the product you should go ahead and create the folders and use the adm templates to set policies directing the info to those folders — The ORK and TechNet provide info on how to decipher the info. Since MS has so kindly provided the diagnostic tool, why not exploit it!

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> Since MS has so kindly provided the diagnostic tool, why not exploit it!

I’m not sure if you are serious. Assuming you are, my reluctance to spend time learning yet another aspect of MS so that MS can help me to do what i already do, should be understandable.

I have a standalone system. I write applications, one small chunk of code at a time. I’m not salaried. My time is precious to me (notwithstanding the hours I throwaway in Scuttlebut)

When something goes wrong it’s most likely to be as a result of the code I’ve just modified/inserted. In my most recent case it was a program loop with a Range.Delete. The immediate failure suggested the problem was with the Range.Delete statement – and so it proved to be. (I was trying to delete the last paragraph of a TOC).

Now for the life of me I can’t see why I should start on the track of being a systems administrator just to fit in with MS’s idea of me being a not-very-good-de###### after all these years.

> … create …use …set

This is all extra work to me, when I’m better off resolving my own programming bugs and getting on with the job.

I faniced, at the start of this thread, that there would be a simple switch/hack to say “For my own reasons i don’t want to buy into this conversation with MSoft”.

[grrrr mode]A few suggestions in the thread may actually work (I hope so), but if they don’t, if all these user-mechanisms to disable the conversation don’t work, then it’s another case of MSoft releasing buggy add-ons that just soak up my time. [/grrrr mode]]

In the event that you WERE joking, here’s a soother: I caught a typo before posting. Reread the previous paragraph with “diable ” for “disable”!

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> Are your Service Packs up to date (SP3)

John, I missed this the first time around because I have that automatic doo-hickey set on, but that’s for WindowsXP, not Office XP.

Woody’s newsletter (29 March 2004 Vol 9 No 8) sets out cautions, but these seem mainly aimed towards Outlook users. The newsletter of 18 March 2004 Vol 9 No 7 echoes these thoughts, but what they hey!

I’ve found the updates pages, all 3 of them at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/officeup…aspx?iStartAt=1%5B/url%5D.

Just before I leap off this next cliff – how would I know if Office SP3 was installed? My help About in Word tells me “Microsoft Word 2002 (10.2627.2625)”.

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I have had no problems with Office XP SP3. This is what Help | About shows for me:

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Thanks Hans. I’ll install SP3 and then see what happens before hacking the registry.

I note that the SP3 d/l page includes this text: “Office XP SP3 also includes stability improvements developed due to user input from the Error Reporting Tool in Office XP and from Microsoft Product Support feedback. ”

(later)

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