OFF97: Performance Issues After Installing Office

• Microsoft Office 97 for Windows

IMPORTANT: This article contains information about editing the registry. Before you edit the registry, you should first make a backup copy of the registry files (System.dat and User.dat). Both are hidden files in the Windows folder.

SYMPTOMS

After you install Microsoft Office and work in a program or after you restart Microsoft Windows, the computer responds slowly or may appear to stop responding (hang). The pointer may change to an hourglass and hard disk activity may increase. However, if you wait for a while, the computer responds at its normal speed.

CAUSE

This problem may occur after you install the Microsoft Office Find Fast Indexer or if the amount of free disk space is low.

RESOLUTION

Method 1: Change SlowDown of the Microsoft Office Find Fast Indexer

To improve the performance of the computer when you use the Find Fast indexer utility, add the SlowDown value setting in the Microsoft Windows 95 or Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 registry. The SlowDown value tells Find Fast to delay indexing for a specified amount of time between index updates. Delaying indexing minimizes system activity and therefore increases performance.

WARNING: Using Registry Editor incorrectly can cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall Windows 95. Microsoft cannot guarantee that problems resulting from the incorrect use of Registry Editor can be solved. Use Registry Editor at your own risk.

For information about how to edit the registry, view the Changing Keys And Values online Help topic in Registry Editor (Regedit.exe). Note that you should make a backup copy of the registry files (System.dat and user.dat) before you edit the registry.

To add the SlowDown setting, follow these steps:

1. Close any programs that are running.

2. On the Start menu, click Run. Type "regedit" (without the quotation marks) and click OK.

3. In the Registry Editor, expand the following key:

         HKey_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Find Fast\97
   

4. On the Edit menu, point to New and click DWORD Value. With New Value #1 selected, type "SlowDown" (without the quotation marks), and then press ENTER.

5. With the value SlowDown selected, click Modify on the Edit menu. Under Base (In the Edit DWORD Value dialog box), click Decimal. Type a value greater than 1,000 (valid values are between 0 and 10,000).

   NOTE: These values are measured in milliseconds. The implicit default value is one second or 1,000 milliseconds.

6. Click OK and quit the Registry Editor.

7. Restart Microsoft Windows.

Method 2: Check Your Disk Space

Check to make sure that you have enough disk space available. If you are running low on disk space, delete any files and folders that you are not using and empty the Recycle Bin to create more available disk space.

STATUS

This behavior is by design of the Find Fast Indexer in Microsoft Office 97.

MORE INFORMATION

The Find Fast Indexer is a utility that builds indexes to speed finding documents from the Open dialog box in Microsoft Office programs and from Microsoft Outlook. When you install Microsoft Office, a shortcut to Find Fast is placed in the Startup program group.

By default, Find Fast creates a single index on each hard disk on the computer. You can also create many indexes on a local hard disk and on drives that are shared or on a network. You can open the Find Fast Control Panel icon to create additional indexes (for example, on a network drive), to delete indexes, and to set other options. Although you can configure Find Fast in the Control Panel, Find Fast indexes documents automatically through the Open and Advanced dialog boxes in Microsoft Office programs.

For additional information about Find Fast, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

   Article-ID: Q166302
   TITLE     : OFF97: Overview of Find Fast Indexer