Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

I have Open Office 3.2 installed on my Windows 7 Home Premium laptop computer and only when I right click any open office document from my desktop and click properties to then select a tab from the properties screen such as "summary" or "details" or "security" or any of the other ones I immediately receive an error message that you can see below..
I also receive this in safe mode as well. Ive have done every troubleshooting procedure I can think of including completely uninstalling OO with RevoUninstaller and reinstalling it as a clean install with none of the previously installed extensions and still nothing. After doing a detailed Google search I also ran a series of different reliable Registry cleaning/fix apps as recommendations from the results I found and still nothing.

After the complete uninstall of OO on my system I can successfully go to the properties menu of any doc or spreadsheet or any other associated file and click on any of the tabs without the error message but right after I reinstalled OO I got the error message again.

Its clearly OO which is causing or attributing to this error message since its isolated to just OO files and only when OO is installed. I really like OO and ditched MS Office for it and hope I can solve this issue and not have to go back to office or a cheap alternative. Thank you.

The extended property tabs in MS Explorer are based on plugins: Dlls that provide a certain interface. OpenOffice includes such a plugin for the WIndows explorer, as well. Not sure how stable this DLL interface is or if it has changed with Windows 7 (though it should usually be backward compatible).
This plugin can only work on MS Windows platforms and is not as widely tested as other cross-platform modules of OpenOffice. Reconsider if you really need this feature. If you don't need it, you can exclude it from installation when choosing custom installation. (...and while you at it de-activate the quicklauncher, as well.)

I don't see any issue with this and I'm using WIN 7 Home premium with V3.2.1. Which exact version of OOo are you using? See Help-->About. Did you download from www.openoffice.org?

Thomasjk -

Yes I did download it from openoffice.org and the Ver is below -

OpenOffice.org 3.2.1
OOO320m8(Build:9502)

Rudolfo -

How / what exactly do I do when I do the custom install? I know about the quicklaunch but what about the plugin?

Eureka! I uninstalled and reinstalled it without the Explorer extension and the quicklaunch. Thanks!

That explains it. I don't have the extension. Please edit your first post to mark as {Solved].

I didnt think I added that, it must be installed by default if not custom installed. Thanks!

I'm running a default install and I don't see it the list in Extension manager. Sounds like it was corrupted. I can't check the extensions page because its down.

thomasjk wrote:I'm running a default install and I don't see it the list in Extension manager. Sounds like it was corrupted. I can't check the extensions page because its down.

It's not an extension. It's an optional component (like JRE) that is installed by default.

Ahh. I see that when I tried to install and I asked setup to Modify my current installation. I guess there was some corruption in his install.

Found a couple of bug reports about Explorer crashing when accessing the file properties, but I'm not sure they are the same or just similar. One (reported on Vista) is unconfirmed and mentions the C++ Runtime Error. The other (reported on Windows 7) doesn't mention the C++ Runtime Error, but it is reproducible, and says that MS Office must also be installed and that MS Office file formats must be associated with OOo. I haven't been able to reproduce the crash on Vista.

File Properties Tab causes C++ Runtime error

Right-clicking on some properties of file in OS shell causes Explorer crash

[UNSOLVED] C++ RUNTIME ERROR

OpenOffice.Org 3.3.0 RC10 00033020 (Build:9567) / Default Install / Downloaded from OpenOffice.Org

I receive this same error almost every time that open swriter.exe, (Text Document):
The solutions mentioned in the previous responses to this thread have not resolved this issue in this case.

I have been using a RC version of OO since RC3 and I am now using RC10. However, this problem just began about a week ago with RC4. I then updated to RC10 but no with improvement. Based upon previous entries in this discussion thread it appears that it also appears in 3.3.0.

QuickLaunch works fine, but launching swriter or a template will usually cause the error. Is there a debug option available for OO, something that would capture error information when OO crashes?

Any other ideas?

Thanks in advance for your time & assistance!!!

dougshuck wrote: I receive this same error almost every time that open swriter.exe, (Text Document):

The solutions mentioned in the previous responses to this thread have not resolved this issue in this case.

The message says "Runtime error in explorer.exe". OpenOffice doesn't start a separate instance of explorer. This can only happen if the explorer uses the dll or ocx of OpenOffice to display the extended properties of a OOo file. You say your error happens when you are starting swriter ... are you sure that the content of the message is the same. Don't judge based on the title that will be always the same for nearly every C++ program on MS Windows.
Please double check if it is really saying in explorer.exe.

And also open swriter.exe can be done in very different ways ... what happens if you open Writer from the startmenu (without a document)?

Hi Rudolfo

It is exactly the same error. It happens intermittently (3 out of 5 times, or worse) upon opening swriter, and occasionally when opening OO3.3. I have removed & reinstalled several times over the past few months but the problem persists. I have found the same issue with OO3.4-Dev as well.

Best regards,
Doug

Some instability problems with OOo on Windows 7 have been cured by removing IE9 (system reverts to IE8). It is worth trying this to see if it fixes your problem.