Tresan -- I only ran into this problem today and was overjoyed to find your 11-hr-old post. It solved the problem. I am surprised that after renaming Data to Old-Data, MS Word did not create a new Data entry. Regardless -- many thanks ! ! !

I solved the problem by doing your suggestion. Then my computer did an automatic update later in the week and then I had the previous problem back with MSWord. I tried and rename old-data to old-data1 and that didn't remedy the problem. I tired rebooting and no luck. Any suggestions?

i had the same problem for a month. i tried all the recommendations from a lot of the forums but somehow the problem persisted. what was so peculiar about my problem was that the Word shutdown error only showed itself on certain word documents. then last week, i opened the Problem Reports and Solution in the Control Panel and was surprised to learn that the problem was actually due to my HP 900 Inkjet Vista driver. True enough, after I uninstalled the printer driver, I've never encountered anymore shutdown errors from Office 2007. According to the page, HP already knows about it and is in the process of developing a fix (a wonder when will that be).

So, you might want to check if it's all an issue with your driver. Hope this helps :-)

Hats of for the solution on the shut down errors with Word 2007. That one has bugged me for months.

Now, on a related note, does anyone know how to eliminate the same problem with PowerPoint 2007? I did not find a similar data folder in the registry for PowerPoint.

I got help from Microsoft Support, and they helped me fix: Word Not Responding. When I opened an existing document, it would immediately try to shut down Word, and restart Word. When I opened Word from the Start menu, it opened, but the mouse would not work the scroll bars or position on the document. When trying to shut down, got not responding. The FIX: was to rename the Addins directory in the registry in two places under Word. The problem was caused by an incompatible addin, and changing the directory to OldAddins fixed the problem. The only addins on my system were from Microsoft, but that is a different issue.

Tresan - You rock ! - Spent almost 5 hours dealing with the knuckle heads at Dell – deleting and installing MS office – finally they said – we can’t figure this out – call Microsoft ! Thank you again !

I deleted Flash Paper and that sorted out everything apart from the shut down error.

Five stars to Tresan for this time saving solution. Thanks!

I experienced the same issue. Followed your advice and the issue was fix temporarily. Last night, after vista installed updates, the problem resumes. I tried to follow the advice again go clicking on run and then renaming Data into "Old-Data." The issue is that when I got to that state, I already had a folder called Old-Data from the previous time and the folder above it was "Data." I was unable to name that folder "Old-Data", but instead named it "Old Data", but no use. Does anyone have any more advice on resolving this issue?

Originally Posted by Tresan

I just figured out a fix.

Start, Accessories, Run

Enter "regedit" and hit enter

Now look into:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Word
Find the "Data" folder and rename it to "Old-Data"
Start Word again and the problem is fixed.
It seems its due to a change in the standard settings in the last office update - and hence has nothing to do with drivers og vista sp1 etc.

Tresan: Thanks for your insight, it has been most helpful. I too tried it and it works beautifully. Great job...