OfficeLifeBoatHang

  • Thread starter Thread starter dan
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D

dan

I'm posting this here to give visibility to the problem and just on the
outside chance someone has seen it and found a better solution. The setup is
a user with Outlook 2007, XP SP3, connecting to Microsoft Online Hosted
Exchange (I realize this is not a common setup at this time). The user
repeatedly, but not 100% of the time, has Outlook hangup, especially when
trying to send emails with attachments. What we see in the event log is
"officelifeboathang outlook.exe" followed by a bunch of other error codes. A
search on the internet shows any number of references to this error, but
very few solutions. One post suggested renaming the oflb.exe to oflb.exe1,
and another suggested installing Office 2007 SP2 would solve the problem -
neither did. The only solution that has worked has been to uninstall Outlook
2007 and install Outlook 2003, which seems to be working fine.

Interestingly enough, 3 other users in the office with Outlook 2007
connecting to Online Exchange have not seen the problem, just this one user.
I'm inclined to think it's an interaction with some other program or addin,
but I've turned off all of them I could find, with no help.

If anyone has any ideas about this, I'd love to hear them. I'd really like
to get the user back to Outlook 2007, but not without a solution to the
problem.
 
You'll notice that a process OFFLB.exe becomes active when Outlook freezes,
and
disappears when it becomes responsive again. It's Microsoft Office Program
Recovery. This is also known as Office Lifeboat.

There may be a 3rd party add-in, a corrupted template or document, a damaged
registry or another factor, such as HP PhotoSmart Printer driver, or other
issue going on such as an Office document recovery. To start, use
Start=>Search to cleanup and delete any left
over files from crashes by searching for file names found using:

~$*.*;*.tmp
 
Thanks for responding Kathleen. I'll have to wait to get a chance to try
what you recommend, since I will have to reload Outlook 2007 to test it.
Also, there was an error in my original post - the other 3 users are running
Outlook 2003, not 2007.
 
Q: Does everyone that has this error - have (or had) a mixed environment of
Office 2003 and 2007????

In other words, did you have 2003 and upgrade to, or add in addition to, or
install another program from 2007????

I will try the temp/recover files clean up, but I am not holding out much
hope.

Too, this isn't just isolated to Outlook. Have seen Word trigger this.
However, Outlook is likely running at the same time.

I believe that it is something ill-behaved within outlook 2007 and exchange.
Likely a patch that will come out from MS some day.

Doesn't anyone find it curious that no one from MS is stepping up and saying
- 'look at KB#####' for a fix for this????

Thnx,
Steve
 
The computer where I experienced this problem was brand new with a clean
install of the OS (XP SP3) and Office 2007. I too believe this is an as yet
unpatched Microsoft bug. My only fix was to uninstall Outlook 2007, and
install Outlook 2003. I left the other Office 2007 components installed.
The client is happy so I haven't tried anything else.
 
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