OpenOffice freezes with regularity

[terryally]

Hi,

I transitioned from XP to Windows 8.1 and since then OO is freezing and on one occasion I had a fatal crash losing all my spreadsheet data. I use mainly Writer and Calc and both freeze often.

Elsewhere on the forum there was a solution - that of creating a new profile. Been there, done that. Worked well for about two months, now the big freeze/crashes return! In Calc, the programme terminates or freezes when I click the 'save' icon.

In Writer, freezing occurs when I click the 'save' icon as well.

Can anyone provide me with a solution please?

Thanks
Terry

[RoryOF]

Try the new profile again. It is possible that for some reason - perhaps cross talk from other programs, perhaps hardware problems, perhaps over hasty computer close down after an OpenOffice session, perhaps even inadvertent User interaction - that the User Profile can become corrupted.

Edit: You should also (just in case) start TaskManager (Ctrl Shift Esc) and kill any soffice processes shown on TM's Processes tab. These can be left after a program crash and cause problems.

[John_Ha]

If you have another freeze, can you possibly save a copy of C:\Users\xxxxxx\AppData\Roaming\OpenOffice\4\user\registrymodifications.xcu before resetting the profile.

I would like to test a theory that this is the only file which needs to be re-set. If so, people won't lose the majority of their settings when they re-set their profile.

[terryally]

Howdy folks,

I reset the profile and everything worked well before the 'bad alloacation' message popped up again this morning and the programme shut.

It there another solution?

I am beginning to think that perhaps I should discontinue using OO.

Terry

[RoryOF]

If you start Windows in Safe Mode, OpenOffice will run. If it is stable in that mode then you need to look for interference from some other program or driver that runs in Windows normal mode.

[John_Ha]

It there another solution?

Without knowing what is happening we cannot suggest anything else. Please help us to debug why this is happening - we need live data to work out what is happening.

The next time it happens, before resetting the profile, please do two things for us

1 As a minimum, please save a copy of C:\Users\xxxxxx\AppData\Roaming\OpenOffice\4\user\registrymodifications.xcu before resetting the profile and post it on a file share site like mediafire, or email it to me (I will send you a private message with my ID)

2 Preferably, if at all possible, please save a copy of your entire profile C:\Users\xxxxxx\AppData\Roaming\OpenOffice\4\user\*.* before resetting the profile. To do this, navigate to C:\Users\xxxxxx\AppData\Roaming\OpenOffice\4\user\ and take a copy of \user, and paste it. It will appear as \user - Copy or similar. Now zip \user - Copy and all its contents, and post it on a file share site like mediafire, or email it to me.

I am beginning to think that perhaps I should discontinue using OO.

This is a very unusual thing. I have been using AOO for 15 or more years and it has never happened to me, nor to the vast majority of the 100,000,000 users. That is why it is so difficult to get real test data showing what is happening; and without real test data, no debugging can be done. It is likely to be something to do with your particular PC and software environment.

Please help us to find out what is causing it.

[terryally]

Hi John,

I just emailed you the files (original, 2nd reset and current).

Look forward to your response.

Thanks

Terry

[John_Ha]

Terry

Thank you for sending me three registrymodifications.xcu files. They may help understand what is happening. The files were

registrymodifications_1.xcu 99kB the original “after crash”, before I reset the profile
registrymodifications_2.xcu 126kB the second “after crash”, before I reset the profile
registrymodifications_3.xcu 84kB the current "after resetting profile" after the second reset

It seems that registrymodifications.xcu stores those things necessary so that AOO opens to look the same as wehen you closed it. It stores the Recently used files list, whether Navigator is docked, whether Navigator was open when AOO was closed, what font was in use when AOO closed, zoom value etc.

My registrymodifications.xcu file is 491kB. If I stop AOO, delete registrymodifications.xcu, and restart AOO, AOO creates a new registrymodifications.xcu file which is 1kB at creation. AOO asks for registration information (name, surname, initials) and then opens. I immediately close AOO, and the file is 21kB. So it looks like registrymodifications.xcu starts out about 21kB - why is mine 491kB???? I don't think I have ever reset the profile so this has grown since I installed 4.1.0.

My first thoughts are this is a “garbage collection” problem, where AOO is modifying the file, but not deleting the older data, so the file just gets bigger all the time. Most times when I save a document, the file increases by about 5 or 6kB.

I then deleted my registrymodifications.xcu and replaced it with yours to see what would happen.

_1 Writer opened perfectly and had your screen layout and the Recently used files list was your files. My only problem was that I could not save any document I was editing because I got an error message saying "Could not create backup copy". My options are set to create a backup copy and I think Writer was confused between your file and my options - I did not investigate further. The file increased (from 99kB) to 115kB when I closed Writer.

_2 Writer gave me the Document Recovery screen to recover Untitled 1. I said Start Recovery and AOO said recovery was sucessful, and opened an empty document. When I closed Writer, the file increased (from 126kB) to 132kB.

_3 Writer gave me the Document Recovery screen to recover 2014-07-31 Homestay Program FIN. I said Start Recovery but AOO failed because I did not have the file or path etc. When I closed AOO the file increased (from 84kB) to 92kB.

So, all your files registrymodifications.xcu files seemed to be OK. I am not sure your crash was a problem with the registrymodifications.xcu file. Note that Windows took about 1 second after closing Writer to update the file size. I tried to shut AOO and restart it quickly to see if I could mess things up, but I couldn't (but I have an SSD drive which is blisteringly fast).

Suggestion. If it happens again, just restart AOO without resetting the profile. Does AOO work normally? If not, reboot and try again. Does AOO now work normally? If not, delete registrymodifications.xcu and restart AOO. Does AOO now work normally? If not, do a full profile reset.

I then went looking for what else in the ...\user profile changed when AOO closed and the only things which were written at the time I shut AOO were C:\Users\John\AppData\Roaming\OpenOffice\4\user\basic\dialog.xlc and \script.xlc. These are tiny files with a few lines of XML talking about libraries and both were identical to each other, and although both were re-written at the time AOO closed, no changes were made to the file. I couldn't see any other changes in the profile.

Code: Select all

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE library:libraries PUBLIC "-//OpenOffice.org//DTD OfficeDocument 1.0//EN" "libraries.dtd">
<library:libraries xmlns:library="http://openoffice.org/2000/library" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">
 <library:library library:name="Standard" xlink:href="$(USER)/basic/Standard/script.xlb/" xlink:type="simple" library:link="false"/>
</library:libraries>

So we need to differentiate between a) whether AOO could be got working again without resetting the profile, or b) whether a reset is essential. But my feeling is that something else is probably causing the freezing - it isn't a corrupted profile ...

Another thought. When it next freezes, just leave it. Check TaskManager to see if AOO is consuming CPU cycles. Does AOO sort itself out after a minute or so? AOO could be stuck in a slow response and it might eventually come back to life in which case you won't lose your data.

Sorry I cannot be more definitive.

And another thought. What does the Windows faults log tell you about a freeze/crash - it should tell you the module and the application which went wrong. Start > type in event, press enter, click on Event Viewer > Windows logs > Application. Scroll down to the time it froze/crashed. Is anything useful shown? Try Applications and Services logs. Does it have one for AOO? Are there any Hardware faults?.

[John_Ha]

I have posted a possible bug report as Issue 125340 - registrymodifications.xcu file - starts as 17 kBytes, grows to 500 kBytes where I say:

My C:\Users\user_name\AppData\Roaming\OpenOffice\4\user\registrymodifications.xcu file has grown to 490 kBytes. I cleared the Recent documents history (which clears all applications' histories) but the file only reduced to 483 kBytes. I deleted it, and restarted AOO, and the new file created by AOO was 17 kBytes.

Is this a bug where garbage is not being deleted from registrymodifications.xcu? (I note that the files compress by 90% so there is a lot of repetition within them.)

I have posted the original 490 kBytes registrymodifications.xcu, the 483 kBytes version after clearing the Recent files list, and the 17 kBytes file created by AOO after deleting registrymodifications.xcu.

It set me thinking whether a corrupted registrymodifications.xcu file is the cause of many of the mysterious problems which get "magically" fixed by resetting the profile.

[terryally]

Problem has returned in the middle of a critical and time-sensitive operation. I've had enough of this disaster called Open Office. I am going to pay Microsoft their £7.99 for a reliable service.