[Issue] Fatal errors with tables

[ZulM]

Recently I have upgraded to Apache OO 4.1.0 and have encountered the following problem:
when working with tables in Writer with large documents (+50 pages of text) Writer crashes whenever I select a few rows of an existing table. The error message I receive reads as follows: "SEH Exception: ACCESS VIOLATION".

This issue was not present in OO 3.4.1 or 4.0. Could you please advise me on how I can resolve this?

P.S. My problem is very similar to the one described in this topic viewtopic.php?f=7&t=69892. However I don't plan on switching to LibreOffice therefore my problem is not that easily "resolved".

[acknak]

Greetings and welcome to the community forum!

I'm not able to reproduce the problem with AOO 4.1 on Linux.

What steps do you follow to select the rows? Click & drag? Something else?

Is the system info in your forum signature still accurate? Maybe someone using 4.1 on Vista can give it a try.

[msobczuk]

The same issue (SEH EXCEPTION, ACCESS VIOLATION) happens to me when using OpenOffice 4.1.0 on Windows 8.1.
Even small documents (3-4 pages long) experience the issue.
I can't give any specific issue reproduction steps, but it's always related operations on tables:
1. sometimes happen during selecting a few rows
2. happened to me once or twice when changing the paragraph style for selected table rows (sometimes it is possible to select with no issues)
3. happened to me once when changing the colour of the selected text in the table.

I'm using OpenOffice version 4.1.0 only for half an hour so far and hit this 10 times already, so this should be rather easy to reproduce on Windows.

[John_Ha]

I cannot reproduce this on AOO 4.1.0 under Windows 7. I tested with a 600,000 word document where I added a table with about 30 or 40 lines stretching across two pages. I selected 10 or 20 lines of the table and all was OK.

Googling SEH EXCEPTION, ACCESS VIOLATION suggests it is a C++ memory access violation problem. I am not a programmer, but I think the error message means that an application has tried to access memory which is reserved for a different application. What does the Windows error log (also known as the Event Viewer) show? On W7, Start > type Event > this offers Event Viewer > Windows logs > Application. Was it AOO which caused the violation?

If you upload the file (128kB max here, many MB on file sharing sites like mediafire), someone will look at it. If it is confidential, you can convert all the characters and digits to x by

Find and replace
Find box: [:alnum:]
Replace box: x
Tick Regular expressions (See More)
Replace all.

[openoffice kid]

I recently installed OO 4.1.0 on new Windows laptop. Got exactly this message on small (new) spreadsheet when inserting a column.
I managed to do one column insert but a second one failed with this message and OO crashed.

[John_Ha]

I recently installed OO 4.1.0 on new Windows laptop. Got exactly this message on small (new) spreadsheet when inserting a column.

Please upload an example file which has this behaviour so someone can look at it to exclude the file itself as a cause of the crash.

Have you looked Event Viewer - see post above - what does it tell you? Was it AOO causing the crash? Or something else?

[openoffice kid]

Cant recreate the problem all time. Event viewer said something about excel2003 addin. Can't see why that should be anything to do with it.

[John_Ha]

Cant recreate the problem all time. Event viewer said something about excel2003 addin. Can't see why that should be anything to do with it.

Event Viewer is telling you that excel2003 was running, and that it crashed (or was stopped by Windows); and that it sent the message to the Event Log (or Windows recorded that it had stopped the program). So I think excel2003 is causing the problem - disable it and see if the crashes stop. If you view the details of the item in the Event Viewer, it will say precisely what error message excel2003 (or Windows) sent - this may assist you, but the error message is probably something like Memory Access Violation or similar, and is aimed at programmers.

[oxlade134]

This same fatal error is happening to me each time I select a table in my document . The Event log tells me an application which isnt running VYPRVPN was the event that comes at that time of fatal error.
I could uninstall this application but I do not want to do this any other ideas.

[John_Ha]

oxlade
Welcome to the forum. It is usually best to start a new thread with a problem becaue the cause may be different.

VYPRVPN seems to be the Golden Frog VPN so I cannot see how that would affect AOO.

The first thing to try is to start your computer in Safe Mode, and see if the problem still occurs.

Start > type in msconfig and press enter > click on msconfig.exe > General > tick the Diagnostic Startup > OK.
Disconnect from the Internet because your AV and Firewall will not start.
Now reboot the PC and it will start in safe mode - choose Safe Mode. This starts the PC with the minimum drivers and none of the applications which normally start at startup. VYPRVPN will not start

Edit: Be sure to note the original msconfig settings so you can set them back afterwards

Now try AOO.

Does the problem still occur? If it does, the problem is probably with AOO, so please upload (tab below the white box when you post, 128kB max) the AOO file causing the problem.
If the problem does not occur, then something is interfering with AOO - you need to find out what is causing the problem.

[oxlade134]

Thanks for your advice

I have run this test piece attached in Safe mode with internet turned off and on selecting a table fatal error occurs.

[jrkrideau]

Thanks for your advice

I have run this test piece attached in Safe mode with internet turned off and on selecting a table fatal error occurs.

I am not getting any crashes but the second large table is not letting me edit it. In any case there are no figures in the tables. It appears that the figures are not embedded.

Without the actual figures it is a bit difficult to get a feel for what is happening but there does seem to be something dodgy about that second table.

[John_Ha]

oxlade

Thanks. I downloaded your example and looked at the table at the start of the document. I too got the crash - I could force it in several ways.

1 Cursor in table > Table > Select > Table - the table highlights. The screen blinks and after a few seconds AOO crashes.

2 highlight column 1 and wait. After about 5 or 10 seconds AOO crashes.

3 highlight all columns and rows > move mouse > immediate crash

It also seemed that moving the mouse with the table highlighted could trigger the crash immediately.

I then deleted everything after George William Blencowe lower down, leaving about one page, and the problem disappeared - I could not force it as above. So the OP's (Original Poster) comment that it happens when " working with tables in Writer with large documents (+50 pages of text) " correlates - your document is large with many tables.

I would definitely report this as a bug at https://issues.apache.org/ooo/, giving them the file and pointing them to this set of posts. I am on 4.1.0 with Windows 7 Home 64 bit. SEH Access violation is a Structured Exception in C++, so it looks like it is something in the code.

Q What important points about Structured Exceptions should every C++ developer know?

A They are the Win32 equivalent to Unix signals, and let you catch CPU exceptions such as access violation, illegal instruction, divide by zero.

With the right compiler options (/EHa for Visual C++), C++ exceptions use the same mechanism as stack unwinding works properly for both C++ (user) exceptions and SEH (OS) exceptions.

Unlike C++ exceptions, SEH are not typed but all share the same data structure which has an exception code (the cause) and additional information on what code faulted and what the CPU registers held at the time of the fault. See GetExceptionCode and GetExceptionInformation for more details on this.

Also, SEH has "first-chance" handling, which allows you to log or otherwise handle the exception before unwinding destroys all the local variables.

[John_Ha]

I have done some debugging. See the attached file.

1 Add footer with page numbers to help locating where I am in the file. View > untick Field names to see page numbers.

2 Delete pages from the end until the problem stops. If I delete from page 44 (included) to the end, the problem stops. So it crashes if I have page 44 in the document, but it is OK if I delete page 44 to the end.

4 Leave page 44 in, but delete the rest, and upload file here so others can test it.

5 Every time I select the first table, AOO crashes.

6 If I delete the comment on Page 44, AOO does not crash when I select the first table.

7 If I delete page 44 entirely, AOO does not crash when I select the first table.

That should help the developers locate exactly what is causing the problem.

[oxlade134]

Thanks to you all for looking into this problem, I have reported as an issue and will update forum when it is resolved.
Incredible support from the Forum !

[John_Ha]

oxlade

I added a comment to your post to confirm that it is not just you getting the problem.

nb - when submitting bug reports, the words you type are emailed to all the developers looking at that bit of the code (as are later added comments). Hence your post should be short, but should fully describe the problem in the email they get, and should reference anything else like this forum.

If you can track down specifically where it is happening, as we have done here, the developers are much more likely to have a look at it quickly as it should be fairly simple for them to find the problem in the code.

The bug report is https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=125169

[acknak]

I see essentially the same as John (nice work!), but I still get the crash if I delete the comment on p44 ("Medal Roll index ...").

I can prevent the crash if I delete all comments, or if I delete the last three comments.

I would note that these three comments are attached to text spans, whereas the first comment is attached to a position only. The text span comment is a new feature so it hasn't been had as much real-world testing.

I also see a lot of instability in the comment display on the page (lots of screen artifacts) and in the Navigator: the comments section comes and goes, and comments don't appear until I scroll over the page where they appear.

[acknak]

Right, and editing the xml to convert each comment to a simple position stops the crash for me.

Here's the document:

[John_Ha]

acknak

Even better work - it stops it for me too!

This is the second fault which I have come across as a result of the changes to the comments allowing them to span a range of text. Would you like to update the bug report with your findings ... it will make it even easier for them to resolve it.

It looks like it isn't "large documents", but the fact that "large documents" have comments!

[acknak]

.. Would you like to update the bug report with your findings ...

Done.

[orwittmann]

...

The bug report is https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=125169

It is a duplicate of bug report https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=125024 which is solved for planned AOO 4.1.1 release

[John_Ha]

Bugzilla has just reported that

The comment/annotation of a text range causes the crash. The issue is a duplicate of issue 125024 - its fix is integrated in planned 4.1.1 release code line.

[Bill]

I did test recent AOO 4.1.1 and AOO 4.2.0 nightly builds and there was no crash when selecting a table in the test piece.odt document.