Another window of Word was able to operate just fine without anything being done to the system.
Microsoft Diagnostics found no problems with anything.
And none of that stuff explains why the rotate function was corrupted during that Word session, or why it stopped being corrupted when I started a new session even while the old session was telling me that Word needed to restart. Microsoft Diagnostics found no problems and took no action.
Sorry, but there is really nothing particularly unusual about such a set of circumstances. I no longer use Microsoft Word except in a rare instance to handle a file produced elsewhere, so I’ll have to refer to past experience with Word 2003 and older.
Rotating images in MS Word is one of those tasks which has often crashed a Window for me in the past. I cannot say with certainty what caused these crashes, because Microsoft technical support refused to discuss such problems (circa 1992-1994). However, depending on the software routines used by the application software, rotating the image involves the manipulation of some data arrays in memory. When the software routines are handled inelegantly with an operating system that does not handle memory assignments securely, you get a situation where the memory allocated to the task in that Window is insufficient and results in a hang of the procedure. Depending on the nature of the hanged procedure, the Window alone can freeze, or the malfunction can affect the application and the opeating system. Yes, in some circumstances you can continue to open another Window, and its associated data array, and operate normally, at least for awhile. Again, it all depends upon the specific nature of the malfunctioning software procedure as to what is to be affected and how it is affected.
For me this is a problem that is very common on those machines I’m using with MS Windows 3.1, MS Windows 95, MS Windows 98SE, MS Windows ME (particularly bad), MS Windows 2000 (not so bad), MS Windowsa XP SP3 and IE8, and Windows Vista. The software of one Website will corrupt its Window, while the other Windows already opened or newly opened function normally at least for awhile before a reboot is needed to restore normal OS functions.
Although no malware needs to be present for these problems to be common in occurrence, the presence of malware meddling with the operating system and its memory management really exacerbates the existing problem with the handling of data arrays in memory. So, it is always prudent to do what is feasible to isolate this as a contributing factor to increased problems with memory usage and malfunctioning applications and operating procedures.