Explanation: High Resource Consumption w/ Word for Windows NT

 Last reviewed: February 5, 1998
Article ID: Q122204
The information in this article applies to:
  • Microsoft Word for Windows NT, version 6.0

SYMPTOMS

Word 6.0 for Windows NT may consume large amounts of CPU resources even if you are not typing or performing other activities within a document.

CAUSE

Word has many background processes that it runs when you are not performing any tasks. Because these processes run at a very low priority, they do not degrade the performance of other applications running on the same system. This behavior is by design.

MORE INFORMATION

When other activities are occurring on the Windows NT system, Word background processes do not impair the performance of those processes unless those processes are operating with an even lower priority. Through the Windows NT process scheduler, Word is allocated available CPU resources after higher priority processes have received the resources they need.

This ensures that Word background processes can still run quickly without impeding the performance of other running applications.

Examples of Word background processes include the following:

  • Repagination
  • Updating SEQ fields
  • Checking and performing AutoSave
  • Checking and performing "On Time" WordBasic macros
  • Processing any pending DDE messages
  • Updating screen displays
  • Updating automatic links

If, at any time, you begin typing or accessing other features in Word, the background processes are immediately halted.

KBCategory: kbenv
KBSubcategory:
Additional reference words: 6.0 ntword wordnt resources memory consume
word6
consumption consumed processing
Keywords : kbinterop kbenv
Version : 6.0
Platform : WINDOWS

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Last reviewed: February 5, 1998
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