No matter what I do, MS Works will not run!!?

I have got a new laptop and, until now, everything had worked fine. However, I decided to boot up MS works and... well... nothing...

I click the icon, there is a brief egg timer and... nothing happens. If I look at task manager I can see it as a process, but not an application.

I tried uninstalling the whole thing and reinstalling from the CD. Installation was a success but when I click on the new icon... nothing...

Seriously, I have no idea what is going on??? Anyone have any ideas?

I am using Windows Vista and, as far as I am aware, all other programs open and run perfectly...

 

Did anything show up in your event logs?

 

Nope, nothing.

The only time I have experienced anything like this was when Zonealarm started preventing programs from running... but I have removed MS Works from Zone alarms list and even closed it down completely... but still nothing.

 

Try this: download SysInternals' Process Explorer (which doesn't get installed, it's a portable exe), fire that up, and then try running MS Works to see what shows up in Process Explorer.

 

What version of msworks?

 

After running MS Works with process explorer, WksWP appears as a process... but not much else... application does not load

 

it is version 9

 

lol this is crazy!

 

OK 9.0--that rules out where I was going

How are you loading? Clicking a Works file icon, or the works launcher icon?

Have you tried running the program from the actual launcher file

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Works\msworks.exe


Before we get too crazy on this one, is a uninstall, reinstall out of the question (have disks?)

 

I have already uninstalled and reinstalled.

It doesn't matter whether i use shortcut or go to file directly.

I have also just noticed that System Restore won't load either. Same thing happens. I'm going to try a restart and see what is going on

 

have you tried turning off UAC and right click works->run as administrator?

 

I've seen this before - with the EOS utility.
The process loads, but the window doesn't show.

I don't know what exactly causes it, but I suspect it may have been linked to a driver on the EOS utility.

 

ok.. some things I am noticing.

When windows loads... I hear a click.. not hardware, but the click you hear when you click on a link on a website... I don't know if that is related.

What is EOS?

 

Related to a DSLR EOS is the canon Digital SLR line.

And these come with an EOS utility.

Check if there were any updates immediately before this problem occured.

(I don't know how to resolve it though )

 

Well, I have got it working.. yet again.. ZONEALARM was stopping the program from loading. I tried turning it off but it still wouldnt load. However, after uninstalling ZONEALARM, MS Works works with no problem. System restore also works again.

What the hell is ZONEALARM doing? I have used it (albeit the old versions) for years, and have never had any problems... but it has been causing me nothing but problems on my new laptop!

 

There may be either a different exe that's used to launch MS works, or else there's another exe that MS works depends on that Zonealarm was blocking because you only put the actual works exe itself, and not any of the other related exes, on the safe list.

 

Seen wierd things happen with zone alarm over the years...generally, reseting zone alarm back to default resolves it, but resetting ZA is not always easy or intuitive.

Uninstalling and reinstalling doesn;t do it, because settings are left behind. I no longer recommend zone alarm