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yet another Microsoft blogger

# Thursday, September 22, 2005

Weird Office 2003 Problem

When I set up my new PC I started seeing the weirdest problem. Basically, whenever I launch any Office 2003 application, the process launches, sits around and does nothing for 20–30 seconds, and then the application loads.

When I look at the process in task manager, the process is there and has a 72k working set. It’s the same for ever app. After 20 – 30 seconds the working set increases to normal. I looked at the launches in Filemon and Regmon and can’t seen to see anything special except that there are gaps of 10 and 20 seconds where nothing is happening.

I did a few searches and found nothing (this is one of those things that is hard to search for). But today, I was talking to one of my PMs, Andy, and when I explained what was happening he screamed that he was having the same problem. We both mentioned how we were considering flattening our boxes. But now that we both have this problem, we suspect a bug. It also turns out we have brand new pentium 4 chips (mine is a dual core, Andy’s is a single core).

So, since Andy was a former Powerpoint developer, he is going to try and debug using symbols so we can find out what is going on.

Has anyone else seen this?

update: upgrading to Office 2003 SP2 seems to have resolved this problem. yay!

Posted Friday, September 23, 2005    Permalink    Comments [8]  View blog reactions

 

Thursday, September 22, 2005 9:59:21 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)
You should just report the bug via http://offbug and let the experts figure it out for you.
Thursday, September 22, 2005 11:20:22 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)
I always have this problem with Outlook. After the initial painting of the window, it freezes while it checks for email (on POP servers). The task bar is frozen too until Outlook has unlocked itself.
JJG
Friday, September 23, 2005 7:53:11 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)
Omar,

This happens to me every once in a while. I haven't been able to pinpoint the reason why, but it is common. I get this issue on my Tablet and my desktop....very very annoying.
Wednesday, September 28, 2005 8:51:30 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)
Does this happen when you are on or off the network? Have you run tcpview? Does it happen with a new user account on the same machine, or just your profile?
RVP
Thursday, September 29, 2005 12:03:55 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)
a Similair sympton Happens to me sometimes.. When a network share is non reachable for a little while, due to a random glitch in a random router somewhere far in the distance.

And it's on my top 10 most boring windows bugs ;) : When having A Application, Shows the "Browser to Folder..." Dialog, and stupidly enough trys to connect to each and every share. (and all i want is to open a local folder!)

Or the Explorer itelf, Seemlessly trying to connect to it. And beeing not responsive anymore.
Until it finally times out. Or get killed in the way.

BUT.

With Outlook.. it is a different story.. sometimes.( once a month) . after a clean reboot.. it just doesn't want to get started...
then I kill msn (this is really not a joke) and it immedialtly pops up.
after that, starting msn, everything works fine.

my pc is very clean.

So out of the middle of nowhere, i suspect two things.

a) BitRot inside the Network layer
b) Some Magic Co Relation with a component msn messanger is using and the launching of office applications.

My 1 euro word ;)
Monday, October 03, 2005 11:00:08 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)
If the application appears hung anytime, you can report it to Microsoft (using "Microsoft Office Application Recovery" tool that shipped with Office 2003. Then after you report it to Microsoft, go to the event viewer and see the "bucketId". (Andy knows this stuff :)). You can send me that bucket id and I can take a quick look on why it is happening. Eventually, probably I will take a look at it anyway...

ps. Andy can give you my email address.
Sharad Garg
Monday, October 03, 2005 11:02:34 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)
BTW, a LOT of hangs (top 80%) were fixed in SP2, so be sure to install that.
Sharad Garg
Friday, October 07, 2005 2:47:22 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)
Yup, sometimes see exactly what you describe.
Deva
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