[Solved] Another instance of OOo

[FrankieI]

Hi, I have OpenOffice installed on my MacBookPro with OSX 10.6.

Today opening the application i receveid this error:

"Another instance of OO.org is accessing your personal settings or your personal settings are locked. Simultaneous access can lead to inconsistencies in your personal settings. Before continuing you should make sure user '[my user name]' closes OO on host computer '[my host name]'. Proceed? Yes/No" (Hope this translation is correct because i have OO in italian).

I saw that my host name was changed in "[My name and surname]'s MacBookPro", so I wrote again my host name in System preferencies and now the problem seems solved..

Is this normal?

Thanks in advance

[kabing]

This is most likely to happen if OpenOffice.org crashes, if the mac Crashes, or if the computer suddenly shuts down. As I understand it, OOo creates a "lock" file when it is launched. That file is supposed to be deleted when OOo quits, but sometimes things go awry and the file remains. On relaunch, OOo finds this file and assumes there is another instance running.

Not sure if that's what going on for you or not. There are some threads about this issue here, but I'm afraid I'm not feeling up to searching for them at the moment. Try searching for key words in the error message and/or "lock file" and see if you find more info.

kabing

[lgusaas]

Today opening the application i receveid this error:

"Another instance of OO.org is accessing your personal settings or your personal settings are locked. Simultaneous access can lead to inconsistencies in your personal settings. Before continuing you should make sure user '[my user name]' closes OO on host computer '[my host name]'. Proceed? Yes/No" (Hope this translation is correct because i have OO in italian).

You can use "Activity Monitor.app" (it is in Applications/Utilities) to see if another instance of OOo is running.

Check for a .lock file in your Profile file "/Users/<user name>/Library/Application Support/OpenOffice.org/3/user". You can delete it. You will need to enable viewing hidden files which requires using either Terminal or a third party application such as TinkerTool, which is free.
http://www.bresink.com/osx/TinkerTool.html

[FrankieI]

Thanks both for the answers.. as first thing I upgraded OOo from 3.2 to 3.3 .
Until now this type of error seem to be disappeared...so I guess it's as you said:

On relaunch, OOo finds this file and assumes there is another instance running.

I also searched for the .lock file as Igusaas said but i did not find it...

So i hope that this error won't come back