Files becoming corrupted

[Dick Montage]

Hi, I have had a friend give me very scant details on an issue they are having.  Let me break it down:

 

* They are using MS Office

* Saving files to hard drive, sometimes they save fine sometimes they cannot reopen them with Word saying they are corrupted.

* This occurs in all other MS Office filetypes

* It also occurs when saving to a number of USB memory sticks

* Files are fine if they are sent as attachments

 

What I've not been able to ascertain (as I am not at PC):

 

* Is it only Office filetypes

 

Now, I know it's a sledgehammer to crack a walnut, but I'm not going to be paid for this work, so I have glibly said "Backup, wipe, reinstall" and left it at that.  But I'm actually kinda curious - any ideas?

 

They are running AVG which has been recently updated, so I don't believe it to be virus related.

[xendrome]

Ummm...What in the world are you talking about. I think you're over-thinking this topic.

What exactly do you want me to back up what I have said. All I said/asked is if the copy of office is legal and yes, it does matter. It's all common sense when it comes to legal/illegal copies of software. Right?

 

I said

Does it matter? MS doesn't have a "Save files as corrupt if not valid copy" flag...

and you responded with

Actually, it does.

which is 10000% false.

 

So it really doesn't matter if his copy of Office is legal or not, the activation mechanism in Office has no effect on it saving files as corrupt.

[Neu B]

Not really no, because unless there was something up with the office team sleeping whilst releasing updates and patches, there wouldn't be such a huge problem with office.

And as for over thinking? You were the one that said it's common for dodgy versions of office to cause the problem, go and re-read what you put. Not only is that complete baloney but if it was an actual issue, I'm pretty sure that for being a very widely used pirated piece of software, the internet would be full of reports on it.

Are you sure I said it is common for dodgy versions of office to cause problems? Maybe you should read it again and slower.

I said and you responded with which is 10000% false.

 

So it really doesn't matter if his copy of Office is legal or not, the activation mechanism in Office has no effect on it saving files as corrupt.

You think there is no illegal copies of office that don't need activation?

[xendrome]

Are you sure I said it is common for dodgy versions of office to cause problems? Maybe you should read it again and slower.

You think there is no illegal copies of office that don't need activation?

 

Now your just totally ignoring what you said and twisting our words to try to deflect what you actually said, so can we just get back on topic please.

 

OP, have you told the user to do Malwarebytes/Combofix/AV scans yet?

[Neu B]

Now your just totally ignoring what you said and twisting our words to try to deflect what you actually said, so can we just get back on topic please.

 

OP, have you told the user to do Malwarebytes/Combofix/AV scans yet?

This is what I said exactly "It's all common sense when it comes to legal/illegal copies of software." How do you get "it's common for dodgy version of office to cause problems" from what I said?

[devn00b]

Back on Topic, which neu B seems hell bent on getting away from.

Since you don't know if its all file types, just going to throw a 3rd option i thought of out there. Could it be the drive controller going wonky? I've had a couple boxes where the internal IDE (no sata back then) went bad but was only thing that went wrong. Perhaps run one of the mfg's drive checks to see if thats it (they can pick up controller problems). However attaching and mailing it works fine is odd to say the least.

Again just my 2p.

[Night Prowler]

Doubtful that a HDD would only pick out Office files to corrupt. Like someone else said, it's probably the Memory.

Doubtful that memory would only pick out Office files to corrupt. Like someone else said, it's probably the HDD.

[Night Prowler]

My suggestion is, if no one else suggested it; uninstall office completly, reboot, install fresh, and give that a try.

[xendrome]

Doubtful that a HDD would only pick out Office files to corrupt. Like someone else said, it's probably the Memory.

 

Memory is typically random in read/write which would cause ALL kinds of problems with the system, bluescreens, hard locks, etc, it would not just pick out word/excel files to corrupt... lol  HDD's use the allocation table/index, if the drive is trying to read/write to the same sectors that are free or the same area of the disk because the space is marked as free, then it is more likely it is the HDD.

 

Problem is, the OP said it is also doing to when writing to a few USB flash drives as well.

[Dick Montage]

Sorry for not getting back sooner, totally forgot about this what with New Year and so on.

 

I assume everything is legit - as I say it's not my PC and I am not sat at it.

 

I will recommend an office repair first :)

[riahc3]

Hello,

Doubtful its the hard drive if its also corrupting on multiple usb drives.

The problem is that when you work on a Word document, it makes a copy on the local disk that Word is installed on. Then, when you save it, that copy is "copied" (so to speak) to the USB drive. So it might still problably be the HDD.

 

 

So reading over this again, you've used the nuclear solution. If it fixed the issue, then we might never figure out why this is occurring. If the issue isn't resolved, then it is likely to be a hardware issue. I'm inclined to think that this was Office-specific rather than hardware-related, since Windows itself reads and writes to the disk constantly when in use. Any global corruption issue would make itself more obvious than you've described (but I could be wrong).

For general troubleshooting with Office in the future, consider the built-in repair function, or creating a new user account to eliminate profile/settings-specific problems:

https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1177283-word-2013-will-not-type/#entry596188639

I know these aren't as effective or hands-off as a complete nuke-and-reinstall, but they are less time-intensive and more informative.

I completely agree with this post. Killing a anthill with a 10 nuclear bombs is not the best way to handle things :(

 

 

Sorry for not getting back sooner, totally forgot about this what with New Year and so on.

 

I assume everything is legit - as I say it's not my PC and I am not sat at it.

 

I will recommend an office repair first :)

You could Teamview into it and gives us some more info :)