Word 2002 and Open Office Writer Open Command Crashes App

[Guest]

I'm running Vista Home Premium on a Dell E520 system.

I'm getting program crashes in Word (Office XP Professional - Service Pack
3) and Open Office Writer 2 whenever I use the Open command and attempt to
change folders.

I can open recent files with no problem.

I can open Windows Explorer, locate a file, and double click to get it to
open.

This appears to be a Vista issue, since the same crash is happening in more
than one text editing program. It was not an issue when I first installed
Office XP or Open Office 2, but I suppose it's possible that some activity
since the installation of these apps has caused the issue.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

 

[Peter Foldes]

Vista OS has nothing to do with Office apps. This post and issue belongs to the microsoft.public.windows.word newsgroup

 

[Guest]

As I clearly explained and indicated, the issue is happening in more than one
app, the only thing the two programs have in common is that they are text
editing and running under Vista...one made by Microsoft and one made by Sun
Microsystems. I run both under Windows XP and don't have this problem, so
it's clear the only difference is Vista.

Thanks for nothing. Typical response from so called "support."

 

[Lang Murphy]

I'm running Vista Home Premium on a Dell E520 system.

I'm getting program crashes in Word (Office XP Professional - Service Pack
3) and Open Office Writer 2 whenever I use the Open command and attempt to
change folders.

I can open recent files with no problem.

I can open Windows Explorer, locate a file, and double click to get it to
open.

This appears to be a Vista issue, since the same crash is happening in
more
than one text editing program. It was not an issue when I first installed
Office XP or Open Office 2, but I suppose it's possible that some activity
since the installation of these apps has caused the issue.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Have you checked the event logs?

Lang

 

[Andrew McLaren]

Thanks for nothing. Typical response from so called "support."

I apologise on behalf of my colleague; I think he was a bit hard-arsed on
this score.

Be aware that 99.9% of folks answering questions here are just guys hanging
out in their spare time. None of us work for Microsoft and - apart from the
MVPs - most of us have no association with Microsoft at all. We're just
fellow users. So the level of support here won't be what you should expect
from paid calls to Microsoft PSS.

As I clearly explained and indicated, the issue is happening in more than
one
app, the only thing the two programs have in common is that they are text
editing and running under Vista...one made by Microsoft and one made by
Sun
Microsystems. I run both under Windows XP and don't have this problem, so
it's clear the only difference is Vista.

Now, I dunno exactly what is causing this problem. But I believe that both
Office XP and OpenOffice use the COMCTL32.DLL to present the File, Open
dialogue. This file is shipped with Windows, as a convenience to
applications; but it isn't really a core part of the Windows operating
system itself. Many applications (such as Office) also ship with a copy of
this DLL and will install it when they get installed. Unfortunately this
leads to a whole class of problems, when you get multiple copies of the file
installed and an application picks up the "wrong" version. This is an aspect
of the so-called "DLL Hell" problem, particularly acute here because it is
such a widely used DLL. An illustrative example on XP is
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/829502.

So in terms of investigating your problem I'd suggest you start looking to
see what COMCTL32.DLL files you have installed and if there's anything
strange about them (eg you have a file in System32 dated 2001 instead of
2006, etc.)

If you just want a remedial step, without detailed forensics ... what I'd do
in this situation is totally uninstall Office XP and OpenOffice, reboot, and
then re-install them one by one. Re-install Office XP first (just because it
is officially supported on Vista; see
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/932087) and see if the problem still occurs.
(I expect everything will work fine). After you're satisfied it's working
okay again, take a snapshot backup of your system. Then, install OpenOffice
again as well. First, verify that Office XP is still opening files okay,
same as before. If it is, now run OpenOffice and try to open a file. If
everything works okay - well and good, whatever the glitch was has gone. If
OpenOffice starts to play up ... well, it seems like there's something
blocking them all running together on that machine. You'll want to check the
Event Logs to see if there is any information about what EXE or DLL files
are actually involved, when Word or Write "crash" - most likely there is an
access violation in a shared library. Since many Windows applications share
libraries, there can be co-existence problems.

But Office XP on its own, should definitely run okay on Vista.

Notwithstanding that Vista may have some role to play in the problem, you're
more likely to get good responses in a group like
microsoft.public.office.misc. There just won't be many people here in the
Vista group who have a similar scenario of Office Xp and OpenOffice (most
folks are running Office 2003 or 2007 on Vista).

Good luck, hope this helps a bit.
Andrew

 

[Guest]

Andrew,
Thanks for the informed response and for explaining that no one who posts
here actually works for Microsoft. I will try what you have suggested, and
thanks for volunteering your time to do Microsoft's tech support for them. In
my experience, answers from the user community are typically better than
dealing directly with tech support directly, as you have less of an incentive
to blame the issue on something else.

I actually followed Peter's advice and posted to the Office community he had
suggested. It came as no surprise when I got the following response:

"It isn't a Word problem and would probably be better answered in a Vista
Newsgroup as it looks like a Vista problem.

However, this problem is normally because there is a dead mapped drive or
other invalid link set in Explorer.

--
Terry Farrell - MS Word MVP"

"It looks like a Vista problem" is precisely what I thought from the very
beginning.

Thanks again.

 

[SMHealthNick]

Yeah VISTA is a giant step backwards. Wait until you try Office
2007. It is terrible.

The typical MVP apologist for MIcrosoft claims you can "configure" it
to work like Office 2003 but what happens when you go to another
machine.

I have been using it for nearly two months and it still looks to me
like microsft took the sleek well organized Word 2003 and gave it to a
bunch of chimps to randomly reorganize.

 

[Peter Foldes]

Which Office newsgroup did you post this to. I am there in most but I have not seen your post. Can you tell me the Office group where you posted to. Thank you

 

[Andrew McLaren]

"It isn't a Word problem and would probably be better answered in a Vista
Newsgroup as it looks like a Vista problem.

Hah! That's pretty funny; looks like we're all pointing fingers Things
like the File, Open dialogue are enabled by shared libraries which ship as
part of the OS, but which are only used by applications. So to an OS guy, it
looks like an application problem. To an application guy, it looks like an
OS problem!

I've heard that people use computers for word processing, and photos, and
stuff ... but personally, I never do. I'm only interested in the
semiconductors. Notepad does all my word processing

However, this problem is normally because there is a dead mapped drive or
other invalid link set in Explorer.

So, was this (dead network drive) the problem you were seeing? Or did was
your machine free of dead mappings, yet Office and OpenOffice still crashed?

Technically, an application could *hang*, when it tries to access a dead
mapped drive, but it will rarely crash, per se. Actually it isn't even hung;
just unresponsive, because it is waiting indefinitely for the network
connection to respond (well-designed apps implement a timeout). A truly hung
application has hit Deadlock - a logic roadblock, which prevents further
processing. An application crashes (in the precise technical sense) when it
hits an unrecoverable user mode error condition, such as an improper memory
reference, a corrupt heap, divide by zero, etc. These all have standard
error codes, such as 0xC0000005 "access violation", etc. From the user's
perspective, in all three cases the application has stopped working, so it
has "crashed". There's not always an easy way to tell why the application is
no longer working, without seeing some internal information: either by
attaching to the application process with a debugger, or finding error
messages in the logs with diagnostic information.

Often when an application crashes (ie genuinely crashes, as opposed to
merely hung or unresponsive) it will log an event in the Application log or
System event log, entitled "Application Error". If you can find any such
errors in your Event Logs, it will go a long way towards diagnosing the
problem.

Cheers
Andrew

 

[Andrew McLaren]

Another thought ... you should also check in the "Problem Reports and
Solutions" applet in Control Panel. Go to Control Panel, "Problem Reports
and Solutions"m, and select the "View problem history" option. See if Office
or OpenOffice are mentioned in any of the logged problems. If so,
double-click on the problem to get module names and error codes (and report
back here with details).

Typically, problems are logged here only when an application crashes (in th
strict technical sense). Unresponsive apps, and hung apps do not activate
the operating system's exception handling mechanism, so they are harder to
detect and log.

Cheers
Andrew

 

[Peter Foldes]

Hi Andrew

I replied to you but in the wrong thread.

Kindly go to the thread posted by the same OP as here and directly below this one and dated 6\30\07 at 7:54 pm.

 

[Guest]

Which Office newsgroup did you post this to. I am there in most but I have not seen > your post. Can you tell me the Office group where you posted to. Thank you

Here's the link:
http://www.microsoft.com/communitie...rors&mid=cba014bf-c1a5-49ac-ac9e-3e581a42c38c

 

[Guest]

Another thought ... you should also check in the "Problem Reports and
Solutions" applet in Control Panel. Go to Control Panel, "Problem Reports
and Solutions"m, and select the "View problem history" option. See if Office
or OpenOffice are mentioned in any of the logged problems. If so,
double-click on the problem to get module names and error codes (and report
back here with details).

Typically, problems are logged here only when an application crashes (in th
strict technical sense). Unresponsive apps, and hung apps do not activate
the operating system's exception handling mechanism, so they are harder to
detect and log.

I will be back in the office tomorrow, so I will check out all the things
you have suggested and report back with any relevant error messages if I can
locate them. Thanks for the help.

 

[Peter Foldes]

Have you tried what Garfield-n-odie MVP for Office suggested as below

 

[Guest]

Have you tried what Garfield-n-odie MVP for Office suggested as below

I don't have access to the machine at the moment, but I will be trying
everything everyone has suggested when I'm at my office tomorrow. I'll post
back here to let everyone know if the problem is solved, and if not, I'll
come bearing more details from the error logs.

All the suggestions have been greatly appreciated.

 

[Guest]

Another thought ... you should also check in the "Problem Reports and
Solutions" applet in Control Panel. Go to Control Panel, "Problem Reports
and Solutions"m, and select the "View problem history" option. See if Office
or OpenOffice are mentioned in any of the logged problems. If so,
double-click on the problem to get module names and error codes (and report
back here with details).

OK, I've made a bit of progress and found the culprit. Here's the problem
report I pulled up under Problem Reports and Solutions.

Problem signature
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: WINWORD.EXE
Application Version: 10.0.2627.0
Application Timestamp: 3a9cdbe7
Fault Module Name: PROPSYS.dll
Fault Module Version: 6.0.6000.16386
Fault Module Timestamp: 4549bd96
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 0000a8f9
OS Version: 6.0.6000.2.0.0.768.3
Locale ID: 1033


The villain is PROPSYS.dll

I haven't figured out how to fix it yet.

I have tried uninstalling Office XP and Open Office and then reinstalling
only Office XP as you suggested, but I still have the same problem with it.

I brought the computer home today so I could use my broadband connection.
I'm currently downloading all the updates to Vista that Microsoft says I
need. We'll see if that does anything.

 

[Guest]

The villain is PROPSYS.dll

I haven't figured out how to fix it yet.

I have tried uninstalling Office XP and Open Office and then reinstalling
only Office XP as you suggested, but I still have the same problem with it.

I brought the computer home today so I could use my broadband connection.
I'm currently downloading all the updates to Vista that Microsoft says I
need. We'll see if that does anything.

Now I've done all that.. I actually ran Windows Update about six times,
until it finally quit finding updates. I installed every one..and it's still
doing the same thing.

 

[Andrew McLaren]

Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: WINWORD.EXE
Application Version: 10.0.2627.0
Fault Module Name: PROPSYS.dll
Fault Module Version: 6.0.6000.16386
Exception Code: c0000005

Okay, so now we know it is an Access Violation (0xC0000005) in Winword.exe.

("access violation" is nothing to do with security, it's an improper memory
reference - a process tried to touch an area of memory it cannot access)

The villain is PROPSYS.dll

PROPSYS.DLL is one of the files from the Windows Explorer shell - it handles
COM calls from GUI applications to get file properties. There's probably
nothing wrong with the binary image of this file itself. Rather, something
is calling one of PROPSYS's exported functions with a bad parameter, thus
causing the access violation. Either one of the DLLs lower down in the
call-stack is bad, or there is a problem in the runtime enviornment.

It's one of those problems which would be fairly easy for a skilled computer
technician to solve, by slapping a debugger onto the machine and capturing
the crash. However, I can't quite reach your keyboard, from over here where
I'm sitting

The only short-term remedy I can think of now is to re-register PROPSYS.DLL,
in case its COM registration has been damaged:
- find Command Prompt in the Start menu
- right-click the Command Prompt menu item and select "Run as Administrator"
- enter Administrator credentials
- at a command prompt, cd to C:\Windows\System32
- run this command: "regsvr32 propsys.dll"
- you should get the response "DllRegisterServer in propsys.dll succeeded"
- log out and log in again, to restart the Shell process (no need to reboot,
as such)
- Run Word and try to open a file.

If that doesn't fix it, I think you'll need to take the problem to a forum
which specialises in Word issues. Yes: Word is crashing in an Operating
System supplied DLL; but the actual process which is crashing is
Winword.exe; and clearly, this is not any kind of "well-known problem" in
Vista which causes Word users the world over to crash. Any debugging will
focus on the Winword process. Office experts would have a better idea how
PROPSYS.DLL sits in the Word process space.

Alternatively - and I know this is an ugly solution, but it should restore
availability - back up your user data, reformat the C: drive, re-install
Vista from scratch, and then re-install Office XP from scratch. We know that
a clean install of Office XP on Windows Vista is officially supported by
Microsoft, and should work reliably. Once you have verified that works
correctly, make a full system backup so you can easily get back to this
"known good" configuration. Then add your other apps etc, one by one, making
sure that File, Open continues to work after each major system change.

Hope it helps a bit,
Andrew

 

[Peter Foldes]

posted to the word.application.errors via crosspost

 

[Terry Farrell]

This MSKB article may be a solution.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928149