Alright. I am starting to wonder if I am losing my mind here... In theory, if not in practice, is it possible for the magnetic field of a hard drive to destabilize in a fashion which would corrupt files without check-disk noticing? I have a computer with strange and random things happening. Everything appears fine one moment and then WHOOSH it goes crazy. Nothing interesting is installed on the computer. Windows 7 Home and Office 2010. However, I will write a word file on my computer and everything appears perfectly normal. We transfer it over to my father's computer and after a few edits, it starts doing weird things on his. We tried to confirm the abnormalities by copying the file back to my computer and they still showed. My father tries to center a single line of highlighted text and the whole file centers. Or he tries to change the color of a single word and the whole paragraph turns colors. He'll even do something like deleting a whole section of the file and saving, but when he opens the file later what was deleted is back. Once the file has come in contact with his hard drive, it begins to act weird. We have done antivirus scans, spyware scans, the works. As I pointed out earlier, even scan-disk on my father's computer, but everything is green across the board. Hence my theory that perhaps the magnetic field of the hard drive is destabilizing somehow.

"Fr. Yuri" wrote in message news:08fec948-4563-4722-ab28-9d7b9b31c854... Alright. I am starting to wonder if I am losing my mind here... In theory, if not in practice, is it possible for the magnetic field of a hard drive to destabilize in a fashion which would corrupt files without check-disk noticing? Its MUCH more likely that there is a minor hardware problem such as a flaky keyboard, or a software problem such as undiagnosed malware, or a corrupted installation. Id start by using a different Keyboard and mouse if you can, and see if that change things. I cannot imagine any circumstances under which your symptoms would be caused by such things as you propose, that wouldnt show in a chkdsk scan. You can always try running the manufacturers test utility over the disk, and see what it reports. Noel Paton | Nil Carborundum Illegitemi | CrashFixPC | The Three-toed Sloth

Thank you, Roger. If this is the case for some systems, would it not be possible also for a faulty motherboard to cause this? The RAM was in another P4 and was running beautifully. This particular motherboard has given us minor issues in the past, but they are becoming worse. The other part of this that is starting to scare me is that I just recently ran the DELL diagnostics on the system in question and everything came up clean and good to go. Otherwise I never would have used the motherboard. Also, the copy of Win7 on this machine was a clean install of 32-bit and now has SP1 on it. Dunno if this might help anyone with our issues.

"Fr. Yuri" wrote in message news:46133125-cf4d-47a1-87ce-58967ba2beb8... Thank you, Roger. If this is the case for some systems, would it not be possible also for a faulty motherboard to cause this? The RAM was in another P4 and was running beautifully. This particular motherboard has given us minor issues in the past, but they are becoming worse. The other part of this that is starting to scare me is that I just recently ran the DELL diagnostics on the system in question and everything came up clean and good to go. Otherwise I never would have used the motherboard. Also, the copy of Win7 on this machine was a clean install of 32-bit and now has SP1 on it. Dunno if this might help anyone with our issues. Test the RAM in that machine with MemTest86+ (www.memtest.org) run it for at least a couple of hours, preferably overnight. Noel Paton | Nil Carborundum Illegitemi | CrashFixPC | The Three-toed Sloth

Perform a repair of the Office installation on Father's computer. Click Start=>Control Panel=>Programs=>Uninstall a program and select Microsoft Office (version number) For 2007 and 2010 select the change button at the top and then select repair when the option appears. Reboot the computer after repair completes. For previous versions select uninstall and then select the repair option. Be patient, it takes a while. Then test the "weird" behavior. Check the system integrity-open an elevated command prompt and run the System File Checker tool (click link) This can also take some time. let it finish. Finally, you can download the Avira system rescue file and create a bootable cd. Then place it in the offendeing computer and boot to the cd and run the full system scan. It's free and scans the drive before anything starts. http://www.avira.com/en/support-download-avira-antivir-rescue-system

I've seen this happen with faulty or dying ram.

Thank you Nano. I will have to get back to everyone on the results. :)

Hi, Also, since this issue is related to Office Product, you may also post a thread at http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-us/category/officeitpro,visio2010,grooveserveritpro for assistance. Thanks.Juke Chou TechNet Community Support

This is becoming a very interesting problem. Just got the results on the memory test. Ran it all night long. Microsoft Memory Diagnostics Tool. Ran it in extended mode on unlimited loop. It got through 6 passes and says that there are no problems still. I'm going to try automating the Dell Diagnostics tonite and see if that helps. Any other ideas would be greatly appreciated. :)

Hey, what do I know, but are you sure it isn't something in his Word settings? Some of the auto settings will do wierd things to your whole document when you just try to change one thing.

chkdsk may not notice a problem if the file corruption was caused by something other than a faulty or dying HD.

Hi, Also, since this issue is related to Office Product, you may also post a thread at http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-us/category/officeitpro,visio2010,grooveserveritpro for assistance. Thanks.Juke Chou TechNet Community Support