EndNote + Word 2007 = Oh so slow...

A friend is running an Acer laptop (dual core 1.8GHz with 3Gb RAM), Windows 7 (64-bit), Word 2007 and EndNote X2.  The laptop works at a reasonable speed doing any other tasks until Word  AND EndNote are opened together.  It then crawls along and takes minutes for any keyboard or mouse input to action.  CPU is only trickling along at a few percent.  Word on its own is fine however big the documents are.  A recent upgrade was made to antivirus AVG 2011 (free) version.

Machine is clean of viruses and malicious software, and no errors noted.  Any clues as to how to solve this one please?

This is likely due to the number of styles installed by default, and the way Endnote handles them.  See this thread.  This was somewhat fixed in X3 and X4 which only loads a subset of the styles (and connections, and filters).  – but even then, not necessarily  the subset you wanted! 

Many thanks Leanne.  I will pass on all these details, with the suggestion that they upgrade to X4.

Do you think there’s likely to be any advantage in going for Word 2010 rather continuing to use 2007 with EndNote?

Have you updated Endnote to the latest patch? The original endnote X3 does this when run on 64-bit windows 7, but they released a point upgrade which fixed the problem.

Rich, my friend is only using X2 at present.  I’m suggesting she upgrades to X4.  I’d assume the patch would be irrelevant in that case…?

According to this:

http://www.endnote.com/support/faqs/Install/faq28.asp

Endnote X2.0.4 brings compatability for 64 bit windows.  So either install X2.0.4, or a newer version.