Laptop repair

Can anyone help? My 12 year old son has a laptop (Hewlett Packard, bought from PC World 12 months ago so we think still in warranty but the shop is closed) and is doing all his school work on it, like many others.

A few days ago he stopped being able to open Word, which is where all the school stuff is done. I know less than nothing about computers - is there anywhere local to fix it that is open and recommended? We’ve got a desperate and anxious boy here!

Many thanks in advance.

What happens when you try to start word? I take it you have done a complete off and on again?

Thanks for the response - he has the Word icon on the screen, clicks on it and sometimes literally nothing happens. Other times if he’s in a lesson, for example, the teacher tells him to open a document that the teacher has loaded on to their internal system (Firefly) - we get the option to open, save or cancel, he clicks open, and then nothing happens. If he clicks on ‘save’ them it says it’s doing a security scan - and then nothing happens either.

It’s so frustrating, he’s in tears right now, and I’m so thick with anything techy.

Is Word installed on the laptop or used via a web browser?

It’s installed on the laptop I believe.

If the user licence is using Office365 then an alternative is to use the web version of Word.

This link is what I use to use when I had Office365 https://www.office.com/launch/word?ui=en-US&rs=GB&auth=1

Ah Firefly - I run an installation of that at the school I work for!!
We are having so many issues with pupils using home devices right now and there are so many variables
Do any other Office apps run?
Have you installed anything else recently? AV software for example?

There are a couple of things to try…
Repair office…

Or you can try running office without add ons or in safe mode.
To do that you can click on the start button and type

winword /a - that starts Word with no add ons. If that works a few times it is likely an add in that has messed word up.

Did the device come with Word installed? Do you have the install files if you need to reinstall…

Thanks, we will try that!

Now I think that my husband’s work IT dept allows a certain number of devices to use Office, and that’s where the laptop Office 365 came from. Maybe we should uninstall it and try putting it on again.

My son says he’s tried PowerPoint without success, and he hasn’t put anything else on it.

We’ll also try the repair thing.

Many thanks for the replies - much appreciated.

Note to self - get computer literate post-lockdown!

If he only needs to read docs try and download the doc viewer like this https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/p/doc-viewer/9n69kfjds28z?activetab=pivot:overviewtab which might work.

If he needs to type something you could try google docs (free) if you have a gmail account (or set one up), though not sure if that will work for sending stuff back to the school.

You can normally get a free O365 trial for a month I think also which might be worth trying.

Thanks - we will investigate all of these options, although we may well put off until tomorrow as the stress levels have been rising all day, and it’s too early for gin …

Did you get this sorted @Alex18??

Still working on it! Thanks for asking!

We couldn’t get it going so have put it aside for when we can take it back to PC world - luckily have managed to get hold of another computer so he’s now managing to work on that - fingers crossed! Thanks for all the advice.

Hi, I work in IT and will fix this for free, if you can drop that machine off? I live on Cranston Road, any good?