Microsoft word - winword.exe using high cpu when it just idle

[chrysalis]

Ok I am sitting here watching taskmanager, winword.exe is hovering between 10-11% cpu usage (with it now in background idle) and 20% or more when I do activity in a winword window.

This seems abnormal a word processor needs so much cpu power even when just sitting idle, to give you an idea 10% on my current cpu would probably equate to about 80% on my laptop's celeron which is absurb for a word processor.

I currently have 10 documents open, it seems to use about 1% per document, all documents are text only and average 1 page long. The same happens if I open blank word documents.

Is word 2007

 

[Irene]

Some suggestions for troubleshooting here, including a 'Fix-it' option:
Troubleshoot problems that occur when you start or use Word 2010, 2007, or 2003

 

[chwitt]

I had this problem also and spent about 9 months trying to fix it. I have Office 2010 running on a Windows 7 Home Premium operating system.
I tried many fixes, including buying various software advertising to fix a "winword.exe" problem. Nothing fixed this problem. Then I tried the following and have had no problems since. Hooray!
First: Open the Task manager by pressing CTRL-ALT-DELETE and under the Processes tab find any instances of winword.exe and select "end process".
Next locate the WINWORD.exe file on your computer. For me it was located:
Computer>>Local Disk (C:>>Program Files (x86)>>Microsoft Office>>Office14
Scroll down to WINWORD. Right click and then in the drop down menu click on "Troubleshoot Compatibility". Select "try recommended settings".
Windows will detect issues and in my case automatically set the compatibility mode to Windows XP service pack 2. It will then prompt you to "Start the Program". You may get a UAC dialog asking if you want to allow changes to your computer. Click "yes". Return to the troubleshooter dialog box and click through to finish. It also may ask if you want to save the compatibility settings for future use. Again, click "yes".
You are done. You should not have any more problems.

 

[Irene]

Hello chwitt, welcome to Seven Forums.

Thanks for your post for resolving this problem. I am sure that others with this issue will be most grateful for an opportunity to try it.

 

[Aussieblossom]

This may be an old post but it worked, thanks so much for the easy fix, shame MS can't post such easy fixes, it would save a lot of time searching the net.