Compile error in hiddne module: Autoexec

[ppppenguin]

When I open or close Word I get this error box. Seems to cause no harm beyond being annoying. Doesn't affect Excel.

Compile error in hidden module: Autoexec

I'm using Office 2000 (I have it and I like it) under W7.

The problem started yesterday when I installed an older version of Adobe Acrobat. That's the full PDF program, not the free reader. I happen to have a licence for this old version. Anyway, it really didn't work under W7 so I uninstalled it. Result is this error message.

There's plenty of stuff online about Acrobat causing this sort of trouble but I've looked for the offending files without success.

Any ideas? Obviously I could uninstal Office and re-instal it. Or go over to LibreOffice. Might be easier in the long run.

I did instal AbleOffice yesterday too, for its PDF editing capabilities. Which is why I tried Acrobat5 in the first place.

PS: I'm not running any Norton software which is also known to cause this problem.

[ppppenguin]

Digging around in Word 2000 under Tools>Templates and Add-ins it says that PDFMaker.dot is loaded. Except it's not there at the quoted location of C:\.....\office\startup\pdfmaker.dot and I can't remove it as the remove button is greyed out.

If I un-tick PDFMaker.dot then Word closes without error message but when I re-open it the box is ticked and the error is present.

I've tried the old trick of deleting normal.dot in case it was corrupt. No change.

[ppppenguin]

I'm astonished. I uninstalled and re-installed Office 2000. Only takes a few minute.

The problem is still there!

I feel there's something nasty lurking in the registry but I'm always a bit scared of using registry cleaners as they can cause damage.

[Mike Watterson]

Search the registry and manually edit.
Or run the script from silentrunners.org on "verbose/paranoid" and it may list the registry locations. The script does nothing except scan and make a log file.

[ppppenguin]

I've had a look in the registry and found what I think is all the Word related stuff. Can't see any keys which refer to Adobe, Acrobat etc. I have CutePDF installed as a printer driver but that's been there for years and has never caused any trouble. Anyway, it's not specifically to do with Word and Ididn't see any references to it iin WOrd's registry keys.

[Mike Watterson]

It's not Word / MS Office but some other registry entry Adobe has modified which may have no reference to Adobe or Acrobat.
The MS Office issue is a symptom.

[ppppenguin]

The question is what should I search for in the registry.

Just knocked out a load of entries relating to Acrobat 5. Didn't help.

[Mike Watterson]

Did you download and run scripts from silentrunners.org?

[ppppenguin]

Doing silentrunners now. I've just done CCcleaner which has cleared out a quite a bit of muck but not solved the problem.

[ppppenguin]

Mike, that's the result of silentrunners. Nothing about Adobe, Acrobat. Just one entry about PDF and that's Cute PDF which I'd expect. What else do I need to do with it?