JSI Tip 0944. Word 97 performed an illegal operation and will be shut down.

If you receive:

This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down. If the problem persists, contact the program vendor.

from Word 97, and clicking Details reveals:

WINWORD caused an invalid page fault in module WINWORD.exe at <address>.

you have been a very busy person.

If you open/close ~2000 documents without closing Word 97, on a Windows NT platform, the subject fault occurs (reason currently unknown).

If you're doing a batch conversion, convert

~500 documents at a time.

If you did this manually, close Word 97 occasionally (at least once per 1000 documents).