"Microsoft Reporting Error" bug in Tiger?

[Norman R. Nager, Ph.D.]

Office 2004's "Microsoft Reporting Error" sub-application or script, itself,
appears to have bugs.

On every single occasion that it's been activated during Entourage or Word
operations, "Microsoft Reporting Error" freezes, together with either Word
or Entourage.

Force-quit, then, has failed to quit either "MRE" or the in-trouble Office
application.

Today, I was able to quit the processes via the Activity Monitor but, on
other occasions, after MRE is dancing in the dock (but never functioning),
it has jammed even Activity Monitor and normal Finder shutdown.

On re-starting the computer, no problems can be found when running Disk
Utility, DiskWarrior 3.0.3, or TechTool Pro 4.0.5.

The problems are happening on a 733-mhz G4 QuickSilver (2001) with 1.5 GB
RAM and with OS 10.4.2. But the MRE problems go back to earlier versions of
Tiger.

Respectfully, Norm

 

[John Laudun]

I'm seeing the same behavior with Version 11.1.0 on Mac OS X 10.4.2 on a 12"
PB with 1.25GB RAM and 1.33GHz G4.

When I see it is usually after I have quit Word and Word has gotten stuck. I
have to force quit both apps. Usually the regular "Force Quit" works, but I
have used Activity Monitor in the past to kill the process.

John

(So, we have no way to report bugs either directly or indirectly to the Mac
BU? Come on folks: we're your dedicated user base here.)

 

[Mark]

I'm seeing the same behavior with Version 11.1.0 on Mac OS X 10.4.2 on a 12"
PB with 1.25GB RAM and 1.33GHz G4.

And me on a 1.25GHz iMac, 768MB RAM

When I see it is usually after I have quit Word and Word has gotten stuck. I
have to force quit both apps. Usually the regular "Force Quit" works, but I
have used Activity Monitor in the past to kill the process.

My never "Force Quits" - I usually have to do this twice, or AM as you
do. At least it isn't just me!
BTW - where are the crash logs kept ... I can't find them through Console

 

[Norman R. Nager, Ph.D.]

Unlike some of the others in this thread my biggest problem is in the
Microsoft Reporting Error process.

Office 2004's "Microsoft Reporting Error" sub-application or script, itself,
appears to have bugs.

On every single occasion that it's been activated during Entourage or Word
operations, "Microsoft Reporting Error" ITSELF freezes.

Force-quit, then, has failed to quit either "MRE" or the in-trouble Office
application.

Usually, after after MRE is dancing in the dock (but never functioning),
it has jammed even Activity Monitor and normal Finder shutdown. It has
never responded to Force Quit and only on a couple occasions responded to
killing the MRE and other frozen Office process in Activity Monitor.

On re-starting the computer, no problems can be found when running Disk
Utility, DiskWarrior 3.0.3, or TechTool Pro 4.0.5. Rebuilding Entourage
11.1 does not prevent the problem from re-occurring nor does removing the
Word normal template.

Respectfully, Norm

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Haven't a clue re the error reporting bug, sorry Norman. Obviously, not
everyone is seeing this.

Norman, John, and Mark: Can you shift-login into your user account (to turn
off all startup programs) for a little bit and see if possibly one of them
was interfering? Or see if the same happens in a new user account?

John, at present, these newsgroups *are* the indirect way to report bugs to
the MacBU. The MVPs have been told/promised that MacBU is working on a real
feedback method.

Pete, you actually don't seem to have the same problem. Yours is just an
ordinary problem of Word crashing, and it's generally known how to fix that.
Having the MS Error Report show up is not a new bug--but having the error
reporting app itself *crash* is a new bug in Tiger, without known cause or
fix.

Pete, if I'm wrong, can you confirm that you also were seeing the MS Error
Report app crash *on top* of a Word crash?

 

[Norman R. Nager, Ph.D.]

Thanks for responding, Daiya. My very strong hunch is that my particular
firewall settings that deny traffic through certain ports somehow are
interfering with Microsoft Reporting Error "calling home."

1. Is there any way to disable Microsoft Error Reporting and, thus, prevent
its inability to complete its task with causing Tiger to freeze?

2. Is there a way to figure out which port/s Microsoft Error Reporting
needs to have open? If so, does that port or ports need to be open for
outgoing, incoming or all traffic?

3. If at all possible, could you report the bug through your channels,
please?

Because the incidents are spasmodic as well as occasional-to-rare, safe
boots (shift-down) would not be helpful in focusing on the cause.

Respectfully, Norm

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Hi Norman,

3) I did check to make sure the MacBU had picked it up from here, and will
report it again if I don't get confirmation.

1) That's an interesting guess...is this just the OS firewall or a
third-party product? Do you have Little Snitch or NetBarrier installed,
both of which have been implicated in other issues? Or any other similar
product?
[Could everyone seeing this problem answer that? Three people should be
enough to sort out a common trigger]

Do you have funky settings on the OS firewall?

Except, when Entourage crashes on me, MERP (MS Error Reporting something,
Program I guess) says it doesn't check for a network until after I say "OK,
send the report." At what point does MERP crash on you? After you say OK,
or as it launches?

I guess Office isn't crashing regularly enough for you to temporarily
disconnect from the internet, turn off your firewall, and see if that works?


2) I don't have a clue about port numbers...

Corentin, in answer to you, actually, said a while back:
" You can also set NPF [Norton Personal Firewall] to allow Office to
communicate through these ports.
You don't have to make an entry for every port. You can select a range
of ports instead.
I think Office uses port 2222 and ports greater than 3000. "
And there's a mention of 3464 somewhere, but all this with reference to the
license-checking, no idea whether it would use the same ports. Have you
tried giving Office wider access?

Or give the application Microsoft Error Reporting (in apps/ms office/office)
some privileges of its own?

4) I didn't suggest a safe-boot, just a safe login. Boot regularly, then
hold down shift as you login to your user account. All it does is prevent
account startup items from loading (and you could turn those off manually,
this is just easier). I think a shift-boot does a *lot* more than just
prevent startup programs from running.

Daiya

 

[Norman R. Nager, Ph.D.]

Hi Norman,

3) I did check to make sure the MacBU had picked it up from here, and will
report it again if I don't get confirmation.

Thanks very much for doing that and for your thoughtful response, Daiya.

1) That's an interesting guess...is this just the OS firewall or a
third-party product? Do you have Little Snitch or NetBarrier installed,
both of which have been implicated in other issues? Or any other similar
product?
[Could everyone seeing this problem answer that? Three people should be
enough to sort out a common trigger]

Do you have funky settings on the OS firewall?

I'm using Norton Personal Firewall 10.0.3.
The following are checked:
Enable Stealth Mode
Enable Stealth Mode for Bonjour traffic
Deny outgoing suspicious traffic.
Deny incoming suspicious traffic
Enable UDP Protection
Allow access to essential services
At the moment, I have "protect a range of UDP reports 1 through 1024. (When
I started having MRE freezeups, I unchecked "protect all UDP ports" and
"protect outgoing UDP connections.")

Except, when Entourage crashes on me, MERP (MS Error Reporting something,
Program I guess) says it doesn't check for a network until after I say "OK,
send the report." At what point does MERP crash on you? After you say OK,
or as it launches?

It freezes up before ANY dialogue appears just as the MRE icon begins
bouncing in the dock. It has never given me a chance to send a report.

I guess Office isn't crashing regularly enough for you to temporarily
disconnect from the internet, turn off your firewall, and see if that works?


2) I don't have a clue about port numbers...

Corentin, in answer to you, actually, said a while back:
" You can also set NPF [Norton Personal Firewall] to allow Office to
communicate through these ports.
You don't have to make an entry for every port. You can select a range
of ports instead.
I think Office uses port 2222 and ports greater than 3000. "
And there's a mention of 3464 somewhere, but all this with reference to the
license-checking, no idea whether it would use the same ports. Have you
tried giving Office wider access?

I have special settings for ports 2222, 3464 and all other ports between
3000 and 4000 with the exceptions of ports needed for my fax program and
program linking. Initially, I had denied incoming and outgoing traffic for
the suspect ports that used to conflict with Entourage. Since the problems
have arisen, I allowed outgoing, but left incoming denied. I'm experimenting
one by one now. A couple days ago, I went back to "deny all" on outgoing on
port 2222. If a couple weeks pass with no problems, I'll do the same on
3464. On "all others" outgoing is allowed, but incoming denied.

Or give the application Microsoft Error Reporting (in apps/ms office/office)
some privileges of its own?

I changed nothing there since installing Office 2004. I just now checked
and MRE has "read & write" for "You can", for "owner" access, and for for
"group" access. "Others" are "read only." Does that sound OK?

4) I didn't suggest a safe-boot, just a safe login. Boot regularly, then
hold down shift as you login to your user account. All it does is prevent
account startup items from loading (and you could turn those off manually,
this is just easier). I think a shift-boot does a *lot* more than just
prevent startup programs from running.

Thanks, too, for the lesson on bypassing account startup items.Respectfully, Norm

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Hi Norman,

I really haven't a clue how firewalls/networks work....

I changed nothing there since installing Office 2004. I just now checked
and MRE has "read & write" for "You can", for "owner" access, and for for
"group" access. "Others" are "read only." Does that sound OK?

I meant privileges in the Norton Personal Firewall. I.e., if you could tell
NPF, "let MERP do anything it wants to," that would be a nice easy test.
But I guess it doesn't work that way.

It freezes up before ANY dialogue appears just as the MRE icon begins
bouncing in the dock. It has never given me a chance to send a report.

Well, you might as well keep testing your firewall settings, but such an
early crash would lead me to suspect (based on zero real knowledge) that's
it's not a network issue, especially since presumably you had the same ports
turned off in Panther. You never saw this in Panther, right?

Daiya

 

[Norman R. Nager, Ph.D.]

Daiya, please pass on to the Mac team at Microsoft something I neglected to
report earlier: that the Entourage-MRE system freezeups seem to always
take place after waking the G4 from a long sleep and launching Entourage
11.1. Even then, they're sporadic. I do no recall any freezeups when the
machine is in awake mode or on re-starting the computer and then launching
Entourage.

I do not recall the problem during Panther days when I had the same port
settings with Norton Personal Firewall 10.0.2.

I reported the problem to Symantec but the freezes are limited to Office
2004 applications.

Because MRE has never worked--except to cause a system freeze--is there a
way to disable it without doing harm to any of my Office 2004 applications?

Respectfully, Norm

 

[Michel Bintener]

Because MRE has never worked--except to cause a system freeze--is there a
way to disable it without doing harm to any of my Office 2004 applications?

There is. Go to Applications/Office 2004/Office, that's where you'll find
the Microsoft Error Reporting application. You can launch it like any other
application, and once it's open, check the preferences. There's only one
option to choose from, and that option is whether you want to enable the MER
or not. Simply uncheck it, and the MER will not show up anymore.

 

[Nathan Herring [MSFT]]

Unlike some of the others in this thread my biggest problem is in the
Microsoft Reporting Error process.

Office 2004's "Microsoft Reporting Error" sub-application or script, itself,
appears to have bugs.

On every single occasion that it's been activated during Entourage or Word
operations, "Microsoft Reporting Error" ITSELF freezes.

Force-quit, then, has failed to quit either "MRE" or the in-trouble Office
application.

Usually, after after MRE is dancing in the dock (but never functioning),
it has jammed even Activity Monitor and normal Finder shutdown. It has
never responded to Force Quit and only on a couple occasions responded to
killing the MRE and other frozen Office process in Activity Monitor.

On re-starting the computer, no problems can be found when running Disk
Utility, DiskWarrior 3.0.3, or TechTool Pro 4.0.5. Rebuilding Entourage
11.1 does not prevent the problem from re-occurring nor does removing the
Word normal template.

Respectfully, Norm

I find it strange that when an application (Microsoft Error Reporting) that
has no problems performing its functions on the operating systems available
at the time of its release (10.2.x, 10.3.x) and has problems running on a
later operating system (10.4.x), people assume the bug is in the application
and not the (new) system.

If you run Microsoft Error Reporting, and choose Preferences..., you can
uncheck "Enable Microsoft Error reporting", and it should no longer try to
get crash logs; the Apple Crash Reporter will pick up where MRE left off,
though it (1) doesn't report as much as MRE does, and (2) reports it to
Apple, who will, at best, simply forward it to us.

-nh

 

[Norman R. Nager, Ph.D.]

I find it strange that when an application (Microsoft Error Reporting) that
has no problems performing its functions on the operating systems available
at the time of its release (10.2.x, 10.3.x) and has problems running on a
later operating system (10.4.x), people assume the bug is in the application
and not the (new) system.

If you run Microsoft Error Reporting, and choose Preferences..., you can
uncheck "Enable Microsoft Error reporting", and it should no longer try to
get crash logs; the Apple Crash Reporter will pick up where MRE left off,
though it (1) doesn't report as much as MRE does, and (2) reports it to
Apple, who will, at best, simply forward it to us.

-nh

Thanks very much for your concern with this issue, Mr. Herring. I would
very much like to have Microsoft Error Reporting work as it's designed to
do, rather than freeze up. I respect the Microsoft Mac Business Unit and
would much rather have any problem with Entourage or other Office 2004
component reported directly and fully to MSFT.

Correlation frequently does not equal causation but the only system freezes
I've experienced with Tiger have been immediately preceded by Office 2004
problems and the MRE freeze.

Console does not even report a crash when Microsoft Error Reporting AND
Entourage (and less frequently) Word jointly freeze. Nor do Disk Utility,
TechTool Pro 4.0.5, or DiskWarrior 3.0.3 report any problems after any of
the freezes.

I've observed that the freezes normally occur after waking the G4 from sleep
and when commanding Entourage to execute its first Send/Receive operation
after the G4 is awake. This has happened both when Entourage 11.1 was
launched before the G4 went to sleep and when it was launched after waking.

As I speculated earlier in this thread, perhaps, Office 2004 is first trying
to "call home" to Microsoft but is blocked by a firewall setting when the
freezes occur?


Respectfully, Norm

 

[Nathan Herring [MSFT]]

Thanks very much for your concern with this issue, Mr. Herring. I would
very much like to have Microsoft Error Reporting work as it's designed to
do, rather than freeze up. I respect the Microsoft Mac Business Unit and
would much rather have any problem with Entourage or other Office 2004
component reported directly and fully to MSFT.

Correlation frequently does not equal causation but the only system freezes
I've experienced with Tiger have been immediately preceded by Office 2004
problems and the MRE freeze.

Console does not even report a crash when Microsoft Error Reporting AND
Entourage (and less frequently) Word jointly freeze. Nor do Disk Utility,
TechTool Pro 4.0.5, or DiskWarrior 3.0.3 report any problems after any of
the freezes.

I've observed that the freezes normally occur after waking the G4 from sleep
and when commanding Entourage to execute its first Send/Receive operation
after the G4 is awake. This has happened both when Entourage 11.1 was
launched before the G4 went to sleep and when it was launched after waking.

As I speculated earlier in this thread, perhaps, Office 2004 is first trying
to "call home" to Microsoft but is blocked by a firewall setting when the
freezes occur?


Respectfully, Norm

There are at least two problems going on here. We're aware of Microsoft
Error Reporting hanging issue on Tiger, and we're working to resolve the
compatibility issue introduced by Tiger. It's not network related, but
rather comes at the point where we are trying to extract stack trace
information from the crashed application, which happens well before we try
any network activity. Crashes that are caught by MRE do not have the same
problem on Jaguar or Panther, as far as we know. (But then, who is the MRE
for MRE?)

The original crash of our applications is much more likely to be our fault,
however, or, if not our fault, then perhaps our responsibility.
Unfortunately, in the attempt to deliver the information related to the
crash to our servers for future investigation, we run into the former issue.

-nh

 

[Norman R. Nager, Ph.D.]

There are at least two problems going on here. We're aware of Microsoft
Error Reporting hanging issue on Tiger, and we're working to resolve the
compatibility issue introduced by Tiger. It's not network related, but
rather comes at the point where we are trying to extract stack trace
information from the crashed application, which happens well before we try
any network activity. Crashes that are caught by MRE do not have the same
problem on Jaguar or Panther, as far as we know. (But then, who is the MRE
for MRE?)

The original crash of our applications is much more likely to be our fault,
however, or, if not our fault, then perhaps our responsibility.
Unfortunately, in the attempt to deliver the information related to the
crash to our servers for future investigation, we run into the former issue.

-nh

Thank you so very much, Mr. Herring, for your exceptional candor, for
listening--really listening--to consumers and for the Microsoft Mac BU
willingness to take the point in assuming responsibility in dealing with an
issue that started with Tiger.

Respectfully, Norm