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Q: The message “MS Office Word has stopped working” comes up when exiting Word. This has been happening for quite some time. I have searched the net and tried remedies with no success. I have reinstalled word with no success and I have upgrade from 2003 to 2007 to 2010 with no success. Is there any solution?  It really is just aggravating but does not seem to cause any technical problem.   Have you addressed this issue in the past?

– Chuck M.
Marshfield, WI

A:  Well, I haven’t, but Microsoft has.  There are a number of possible things that can cause this, and Microsoft has a fairly comprehensive step-by-step procedure you can use to fix it.  Rather than spend all this week’s column space on reiterating it, I’m just going to send you over to tinyurl.com/8bmd8rs and wish you good luck with your fix!

Q: Love the column.  I have definitely learned some things from you.  I have a 5 year old Toshiba Laptop I use as a backup that was having issues that I could not solve and decided to erase the hard drive and reload the Windows Vista Home Premium software.  I have the original Recovery and Application Disc that came with the Laptop.  I obviously did not follow the erase directions correctly.  When I start up the Laptop now I get the error message: “PXE-E61: Media Test Failure, check cable” followed by “PXE-MOF: Exiting PXE ROM”. It keeps repeating over and over.  I found the suggestion on line and I changed the boot drive to the CD Drive and tried booting from the Recovery Disc and still get the same message.  I also reset to the Default Configurations and still get the same message.  Any other suggestions or do I need a true geek to reload for me?

– Terry H.
Destin, Florida

A: PXE is strictly for booting over a network, Terry.  That’s why it’s telling you to “check cable” – it can’t find a PXE server to boot from, so it thinks the PC might not have a network connection.  Regardless, you probably don’t want to be trying to do a PXE boot.  I understand you’ve tried making BIOS changes, but it sounds like you still have either the boot priority or the boot order set wrong.  I suggest you either disable PXE (which might be called “Boot via Network” or some similar) or at least change the boot order/priority to put it last.

Q: I read in one of your columns about Google Chrome. I guess during an update of something, I failed to un-check the box to add Google Chrome. After going on line to see about uninstalling Chrome, several have commented that they have had all kinds of problems with their computer and programs after uninstalling Chrome. Are you familiar with any problems after uninstalling Chrome? Is it safe for me to do so? I do not like this program. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

A:  It is safe in the sense that it won’t harm your system.  The typical problems I read after uninstalling Chrome usually center around links that will no longer open from inside applications like Outlook, because the action of opening links remains associated with Chrome, which is no longer installed.  You can fix this problem by going into IE, and from the “Tools” menu, choose “Internet Options”.  Go to the “Programs” tab, and under “Default web browser” click “Make default”.