OFF2000: "The Office Assistant could not be started" Error Starting Office Programs

ID: Q236822

The information in this article applies to:

SYMPTOMS

When you start any of the Office programs or when you start the Office Assistant, the following error message may appear:

The Office Assistant could not be started. Please repair the Assistant by running Office 2000 setup and selecting "Repair Office 2000".


CAUSE

This behavior occurs when you attempt to start any of the programs included in Office on a computer running Microsoft Windows 95 or Windows 98 and you have either turned off virtual memory or set the maximum size of the virtual memory too low. You may also receive these error messages when you start an Office program on a computer running Microsoft Windows NT if the paging file is too small.


RESOLUTION

To resolve this behavior, do one of the following:

To turn on or increase virtual memory, please do the following:

Windows 95 or Windows 98

Office programs require that virtual memory be turned on when you run them under Windows 95 or Windows 98. To turn on virtual memory, follow these steps:
  1. Right-click the My Computer icon on the desktop, and then click Properties on the shortcut menu.


  2. Click the Performance tab.


  3. Click Virtual Memory.


  4. Click to select "Let Windows manage my virtual memory settings (recommended)."


  5. Click OK, and then click Close.


  6. When you are prompted to restart the computer, click Yes.


Windows NT

In Windows NT 4.0, you cannot turn off virtual memory. You can increase the size of the paging file, the file that provides virtual memory. To do this, follow these steps:
  1. Right-click the My Computer icon on the desktop. Click Properties on the shortcut menu.


  2. Click the Performance tab.


  3. Click Change.


  4. In the Virtual Memory dialog box, you can change the parameters for your paging file (initial size, maximum size, and so on). After you change the settings, click Set, and then click OK.


  5. Click Close.


  6. When you are prompted to restart the computer, click Yes.



MORE INFORMATION

In Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows NT, virtual memory allows the computer to use hard disk space as random access memory (RAM). The computer uses virtual memory to augment the normal RAM that is installed on the computer.

If, for some reason, you turned off virtual memory in Windows 95 or Windows 98, or the maximum setting for virtual memory is too low, or if you reduced the size of the paging file in Windows NT, Office programs may not start correctly or start at all. This behavior may occur even if the computer has a large amount of installed RAM, 32 megabytes (MB) or more. The amount of virtual memory required varies depending on the amount of installed RAM. For a system that has 16 MB of RAM, a minimum of approximately 16 MB of virtual memory is required to start an Office program. However, increasing the amount of virtual memory also greatly increases the performance of your computer under Windows.

For more information about virtual memory in Windows, please see the following articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Q128327 How Windows 95/98 Manages Virtual Memory
Q199340 OFF2000: Office Programs Require Virtual Memory

Additional query words: OFF2000 AssistantVM 


Keywords          : kbdta DTIR 
Version           : WINDOWS:2000
Platform          : WINDOWS 
Issue type        : kbprb

Last Reviewed: July 28, 1999