Errors Starting Word After Upgrade Due to Virus Protection

• Microsoft Word for Windows, versions 6.0, 6.0a, 6.0c

SYMPTOMS

After you upgrade Word, you may encounter one of the following error messages if you use a virus protection program (such as MS-DOS VSafe) that creates checksum files on your computer's hard disk. You may be unable to start Word.

   Application execution error: Access to the specified device, path or
   file is denied

   Cannot run program. The specified path is invalid.

CAUSE

The VSafe virus protection program that ships with MS-DOS 6.x creates checksum files in each subdirectory on your computer's hard disk for all files that it checks in that directory. If you turned off VSafe to upgrade Word as recommended by the Setup program, and then re-enabled VSafe after installing Word, when you try to run Word, VSafe compares the WINWORD.EXE file's checksum to the checksum stored in the CHKLST.MS file it created in your Word directory earlier. When these checksums don't match, VSafe treats this as a signal of a possible virus, and won't let Word start.

RESOLUTION

If you use VSafe or other virus protection, after upgrading Word you should either re-scan your drive and instruct the virus checker to create new checksums, or delete the checksum file in the Word directory.

For more information on creating new checksums or deleting the VSafe checksum files, please see the following article(s) in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

   ARTICLE-ID: Q95835
   TITLE     : What VSafe Manager (MWAVTSR.EXE) Does and How It Works