[miked]

About two months ago I discovered that Word was somehow completely deleted from my son's computer. I called the computer tech I've used for years, he was puzzled and we both assumed that my 15 year old son screwed something up, so I had him re-install Microsoft Office. That was in mid July. After he reinstalled it, all of the documents were still there and were converted back into word documents. Over the weekend while doing some spyware scans and virus scans on his computer I discovered that the same problem reoccurred,with a significant variation. Word appears to be gone, but all of this word processing files are in WordPad. My son has been using WordPad not realizing that was not Word and he denies that he deleted anything. The problem is further complicated by the fact that recently his computer no longer has a working recyle bin. Apparently that file is corrupt, and anything that is deleted is just deleted it doesn't go to the recycle bin, which stays empty at all times. My computer tech said he'd never seen that problem before either. Any thoughts about what might be going on and how to address it.

[ScottGem]

There are several points here that can be cleared up by understanding how the system works better.

First, I'm not surprised that the documents were all there. Uninstalling Word, even deleting it will not delete the DOC files. They are stored in a different folder by default.

Second, The files were not "converted back" into Word files. They were never converted FROM word files. Nor are the files now Wordpad. The issue is one of Association. This is one of the most powerful features of Windows. It allows a data file to be associated with a program (using the 3 character extension) so you can open the data file directly and launch the program. What probably happened was that the removal of Word also reassociated the DOC files with WordPad (which can open files in the DOC format). Just reinstalling Word should grab the association back to Word.

Since you don't mention what version of Windows, its hard to tell you were to go from here. The obvious answer is a reinstall to try and fix the Recycle bin issue. You may want to even do a clean recovery and start fresh. This means backing up all your data files.

[LTheobald]

Just to add on to what Scott says - Are you sure Word was uninstalled? The associations might have just been changed (as Scott pointed out). Open the Control Panel, click on Add/Remove Programs and check too see if Office is still in that list. If it's still there, it looks like it hasn't been uninstalled. Alternatively, open up My Computer and browse to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE**\ (with ** being a number - e.g. Office11). If there are still a large number of files in this directory inluding WinWord.exe then Office hasn't been uninstalled.

As for the recycle bin issue, here's what I found on Google:

From this article:

• Click on Start >> Run.
• Type "CMD" and press enter.
• Type "cd C:\Recycler" and press enter.
• Type "attrib -h info*.*" and press enter.
• Type "del info" and press enter.
• Restart the computer

I tried this on my XP machine and it didn't work, so chances are this isn't applicable for XP machines.

Yet again, as Scott mentioned, we really do need to know what version of Windows you have before we can give you more help.

[fredg]

Hi,
What is your windows version, like 98, xp, etc?
Thank you,
fredg

[miked]

The operating system is Windows 2000 Professional.

First of all, I tried the suggestion about the recycle bin, but when I entered attrib -h info *.* I couldn't get any further.

I did go into Program Files\Microsoft Office and Office 10 is there including Winword. When I tried to open WinWord I got an error message "The operating system is not presently configured to run this application"

Any further ideas regarding Word or the Recycle Bin?

[ScottGem]

I found this article which may pertain to your Recycle bin issue:

http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;297760

As for Word, you didn't say how you tried to open it. You need to give us specific info. If you tried launching WinWord.exe then it would appear your Office install was corrupted and you need to reinstall Office.

[ScottGem]

Hi,
What is your windows version, like 98, xp, etc??
Thank you,
fredg

Over an hour after I said it and half an hour after LT repeated it (though he did add some other info), Fred does his imitation of a parrot.