Windows and Outlook and Word, Oh My!

I just got an error message from Microsoft Word I've never seen before: "Saving the Autorecovery file is postponed for Normal.dot". The choice with the alert is "OK". What demented Microsoft engineer thought that was useful? What half-baked Microsoft product manager wasn't paying attention?

This also reminds me to ask if anyone can explain another issue with Microsoft Word: With Microsoft Outlook running and Word being selected as the editor why does it happen that you can exit Outlook and then when you try to exit Word it asks if you want to change the Normal template when you haven't knowingly changed it? If you click "No" you geta new dialog which asks what you want to save it as and now clicking "Cancel" just takes you back to the previous dialog. And if instead of clicking "No" on that first dialog you click "Cancel" then exiting Word is cancelled and you are back where you started!

This almost always happens when I have to reboot because Windows XP is acting up so badly (Winrot is the problem) that a restart is required. So, I go into Process Explorer (which I use instead of Task Manager) and tell it to restart and walk away to get a cup of tea (or a large glass of wine - usually when Windows XP starts to act up it is late in the day and the wine is excusable). I come back 15 minutes later and the machine is sitting there, waiting, with Windows asking me what to do about the Normal template. At this point I usually have to suppress the desire to put my fist through the monitor. Anyone?

• Software