Unstable OpenOffice 4.1.9

[Mikael P.]

Hello,
I'm wondering if there's some best practice for getting a good experience out of OO? I'm not really doing anything special when writing but every so often the little bugger will crash on me. If I'm lucky it does a nice work of recovering my text but recently it's failed the recovery too. Apart from writing everything in notepad and copying to open office is there anything else I can be doing?

Thanks for the assistance.

[RoryOF]

A first step in diagnosis is to start Windows in Safe Mode and see if OpenOffice runs stable in that mode.

[John_Ha]

I'm wondering if there's some best practice for getting a good experience out of OO?

AOO tends to be rock solid so it is probably something on your PC interfering with it. As Rory recommends, do a test by running it is Safe Mode. If running in Safe Mode fixes it we can then track down the culprit.

Strange problems are sometimes fixed by resetting the user profile - see Resetting the user profile.

In the meantime, Tools > Options > Load/Save. Select Always create backup copy and set AutoRecovery to, say, 5 minutes.

[Mikael P.]

lol so it's not only Maya that has that as default solution.
No, it's really a question of Open office being unstable. It's been like that for years and I've never bothered asking. Now I'm so fed up so I thought I might as well ask!

[Mikael P.]

AOO tends to be rock solid so it is probably something on your PC interfering with it.

Interesting hearing you saying that. It's been really flaky across all machines I've been using.

Can't remember the last time I had to start in safe mode

[John_Ha]

No, it's really a question of Open office being unstable. It's been like that for years

It may have been like that for you for years. For 99.9999% of users it is, like for me, rock solid. We therefore need to see what is different on your PC.

If you want assistance, try the two things you have been asked to try.

It's been really flaky across all machines I've been using.

That suggests looking for something like a background utility common on all your machines. Clipboard utilities are notoriously problematic.

[Villeroy]

Since 10 years there is a new OpenOffice: https://www.libreoffice.org/discover/li ... penoffice/

[Mikael P.]

If you want assistance, try the two things you have been asked to try.

I had no intention of sounding flippant. It was more of surprise, I've been so accustomed to that solution with Maya. But it's great hearing that this might ease things for open office! I will get back and report if I have any nasty surprises in the following days.

[Mikael P.]

Since 10 years there is a new OpenOffice: https://www.libreoffice.org/discover/li ... penoffice/

I did try that a few years ago. Maybe I should give it a go once again. Thanks for the reminder!

[John_Ha]

It would also help if you could

a) be quite specific about exactly what you did to cause a crash (AOO disappears completely) or hang (AOO stays but is unresponsivce), and
b) whether it is reproduce-able - ie can you force it to occur?

[Mikael P.]

It would also help if you could

a) be quite specific about exactly what you did to cause a crash (AOO disappears completely) or hang (AOO stays but is unresponsivce), and
b) whether it is reproduce-able - ie can you force it to occur?

Indeed. I perfectly well understand the nature of posting a question like I did. But I've learnt something at least thanks to you lot!