Immediate crash following new install of 4.1.8 ... Why?

[DesertLew]

A longer title for this problem report and request for help would be: IMMEDIATE CRASH FOLLOWING INSTALL & RUN OF 4.1.8 -- WITH -GHOST- FILE "UNTITLED 1" AS APPARENT CULPRIT ....

A quick history of my immediate APACHE OPEN OFFICE problem: After using various releases of this app on several Windows laptops for at least 10 years, I am presently running APACHE OPEN OFFICE Writer and Calc on a 2-yr old HP Laptop under Win 10. Upon learning of the recent release of 4.1.8, I re-started the Win 10 OS and then used the standard Win 10 procedure to DE-install 4.1.7. Following which I downloaded and installed the new release 4.1.8 without any obvious problems. However, my attempting to RUN it successfully revealed a serious problem immediately ...

APACHE OPEN OFFICE 4.1.8 crashed immediately upon starting, and the crash recovery code displayed the OPEN OFFICE DOCUMENT RECOVERY dialog box, listing exactly one text file as perhaps the "culprit" .... FNAME: "Untitled 1", with STATUS: "Not recovered yet". Where did this file come from?? (I have seen this happen in the past on occasion with 4.1.7 . ) ...

Clicking the START RECOVERY button gets us to the status of SUCCESSFULLY RECOVERED. Tben clicking the NEXT button causes a blank text page to open on the screen, apparently the emptyi file associated the name "Untitled 1". It's still not clear where this untitled file came from! After 15 seconds, the page vanishes and we have a new dialogue box ... OPEN OFFICE DOCUMENT RECOVERY, along with the usual following text, whereupon we are back where we started and can't get out of the loop! Text in the dialog box: "Due to an unexpected error, OPEN OFFICE crashed ... " What was the error??

Would anyone have a suggestion about how to get out of this loop, WHY this repeated crashing mode has occurred, and how to restore normal operation of OPEN OFFICE 4.1.8?

[FJCC]

Have you tried cancelling the recovery of that file?

[DesertLew]

Yes, and here is what happens ... By "cancelling the recovery of that file ..." I understand that you mean I should click on the CANCEL button presented on the screen in the lower right hand corner of the DOCUMENT RECOVERY dialog box. After clicking on YES in response to SURE YOU WANT TO CANCEL? , the BLANK (empty) text file "Untitled 1" appears once again on the the screen, replacing the DOCUMENT RECOVERY dialog box.

When no inputs are made from the keyboard in the following 15 seconds, the blank text file disappears from the screen for no apparent reason, and is replaced by the first DOCUMENT RECOVERY dialog box once again, listing the file "UNTITLED 1" once again, and awaits instructions for starting recovery of the file .... In other words, back in the endless loop!

Any additional thoughts or recommendations about this seemingly hopeless situation?

[FJCC]

Try resetting your user profile. To do that, open any folder and enter %appdata%\openoffice\4 in the address bar near the top of the window. That will take you to a folder containing a folder named user. Change the name of that folder to user_old. Restart OpenOffice and see if it is stable. You should get the registration screen when you start OpenOffice because the lack of a user profile is taken to mean you have not used the program before.

[DesertLew]

Followed your instructions to the letter, to reset the USER PROFILE, by changing the name of "user" to "user_old". I then opened Task Manager and ended Open Office 4.1.8, before re-starting Open Office 4.1.8. A FATAL ERROR dialog box appeared on the screen with this message: "Open Office 4.1.8 - Fatal Error ! The application cannot be re-started .. [context = "user" caught unexpected exception!" ... I then re-started just the Writer part of Open Office, and got the usual Welcome Screen ... "Welcome to Open Office 4.1.8 ... etc ... ". After entering name & initials, I clicked on FINISH and got a Blank Text File on the screen. So I waited without entering anything .... Fifteen seconds later, Open Office crashed and I was back to the usual Document Recovery Screen with "Untitled 1" as the file to recover. In other words, I was back to the ENDLESS LOOP situation which I have experienced so many times while trying to solve this problem! THIS IS FRUSTRATING! ... Would you have any other suggestions about what to try??

[FJCC]

I would uninstall OpenOffice, download a fresh set of installation files and do a new installation. If you search Windows for Add or Remove Programs, you should get a link to the utility for removing OpenOffice.

[Hagar Delest]

Followed your instructions to the letter, to reset the USER PROFILE, by changing the name of "user" to "user_old". I then opened Task Manager and ended Open Office 4.1.8, before re-starting Open Office 4.1.8

You've tried to reset the profile BEFORE closing AOO?
Close all AOO instances first. Make sure that there is no soffice.bin process in the task manager anymore.
Then rename the user folder and restart AOO.

[DesertLew]

Regarding my continuing AOO "ENDLESS LOOP W/CRASH" problems ... All recommendations and instructions offered on 14 and 15 Nov have been implemented to the letter, including: Restarting Windows 10, Uninstalling AOO 4.1.8 app, Resetting (Clearing) USER PROFILE folder (if any) and Downloading & Installing a fresh copy of AOO 4.1.8. And finally, starting AOO from the START icon.

Results BOTTOM LINE: No Solution or even any visible progress ... All attempts at keeping AOO from immediately crashing lead to a CRASH along with display of the AOO Document Recovery dialog box, showing a single file named "Untitled 1" as the file to be "recovered" ... followed by an endless CRASH loop if there is an attempt to "recover" the ghost file.

My level of frustration at this problem continues rising, due to my inability to run a clean copy of AOO 4.1.8 in what appears to be a freshly re-started Windows-10 OS on my HP laptop. Are there any further recommendations offering something I have not yet tried?

If there are no further procedural recommendations, can anyone in the Community recommend to me a person highly proficient in & knowledgeable about OPEN OFFICE operation in a Win-10 environment, who would be willing to work with me on a live 2-way telephone (preferred) or texting CHAT connection? ... With financial compensation, of course.