outlook 2007 and Winzip email companion

[overly frustrated]

having a major issue with Outlook 2007 and Winzip email companion.
We have loaded the Winzip email companion on 40 test machines and are having
problems with approximately 8 of them.
The error is inconsistent. Sometimes it will work for a user and when you
exit and come back into Outlook, it will stop crash Outlook.
Outlook says there is a problem with the Winzip email companion add-in.
When the add-in is disabled, Outlook works fine.
We have contacted Winzip support and they say the problem is with Outlook.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

[overly frustrated]

UPDATE
The error messages I get when trying to send an email is:
Microsoft Office Outlook has encountered a problem and needs to close. We
are sorry for the inconvenience.

Microsoft Office Outlook
Outlook esperienced a serious problem with the 'winzip e-mail companion'
add-in. if you have seen this message multiple times, you should disable
this add-in and check to see if an update is available. Do you want to
disable this add-in?

In the event viewer it says:
Faulting application outlook.exe, version 12.0.6423.1000, stamp 49b08185
faulting module msvbvm60.dll, version 6.0.98.2, stamp 4802a186, debug? 0,
fault address 0x00105cf3.

Accepted safte Mode action: Microsoft Office Outlook.

 

[Ken Slovak - [MVP - Outlook]]

What other addins are you running with Outlook on those problem machines?

That error message usually comes up with Companion when you are running an
addin that accesses the Outlook object model from a background thread. That
crashes or hangs Outlook and when Watson goes looking for a culprit it finds
an addin written using VB6, due to how the stack is set up in that case. It
doesn't mean the problem is actually caused by the addin that's implicated
by Watson. Companion was written using VB6.

I'm surprised that the WinZip support people told you the problem is with
Outlook, they are familiar with the problems caused by such badly written
addins and have dealt with those problems previously. You might want to try
escalating the problem with them and see what happens.

In any case, if my diagnosis is correct, the only way to get rid of the
problem and to continue using Companion (or indeed any addin written using
VB6) is to stop using the badly written addin or to find a later version
that doesn't access the Outlook object model from a background thread.

Some addins I've seen that do that are versions of the Apple ITunes Calendar
Synch, Blackberry, Plaxo, LinkedIn, Skype, and Google addins for Outlook.
That's by no means a comprehensive list.

Just so you know, I wrote the Companion addins for WinZip, so I'm quite
familiar with this problem and that error log entry.

 

[overly frustrated]

Thanks for your reply Ken. I have read many articles and support you have
given throughout the years and was hoping that you would see my plea for help.
This is the reply I got from Winzip Technical Support:

This may be something that WinZip E-Mail Companion cannot control. We have
contacted Microsoft's Outlook team and reported problems that we have seen
with various Outlook add-ins. They are aware of the problems and it seems
that in most cases it is a result of the way that add-ins connect to Outlook.

The results of the investigation by Microsoft cleared Companion of any
faults, but did not present a pretty picture since there is no possible
change to the Companion that WinZip can make to prevent the problem from
occurring. There's also no way to prevent Companion from possibly being
blamed for the crashes. It appears, from our testing, that the blame goes
either to the last add-in installed or the last add-in on the list of add-ins.

To answer your question about add-ins:
Active Application Add-ins
Microsoft Exchange Unified Messaging
Microsoft Office SharePoint Servier Colleague Import Add-in
Microsoft Outlook Mobile Service
PDFMOutlook
WinZip E-Mail Companion
Inactive Appliation add-ins
Microsoft VBA for Outlook Addin

FYI - We are trying to use WinZip E-Mail Companion 2.0 so I don't believe
there is a higher version we can use.

And after reading WinZip's email again, I must admit that they are not
actually pointing the finger at Outlook as being the cause of my problems,
but they do say that Companion is cleared of any faults and it is the way
that add-ins connect to Outlook.

 

[Ken Slovak - [MVP - Outlook]]

It's not really how any addins connect with Outlook, there's only one way to
do that. It's that some addins insist on accessing the Outlook object model
from a background thread. That's the problem, despite many years and KB
articles from MS saying not to do that.

I first discovered the problem in relation to the ITunes Calendar Synch
addin, which after synching would hang or crash Outlook and get Companion
blamed. In working with the top MAPI escalation engineer at MS we discovered
that Apple was doing that and that due to how the VB6 runtime is, that if
any VB6 addin is running when that background access occurs the top VB6
addin on the call stack gets the call and crashes the VB6 runtime, therefore
getting the VB6 addin blamed for the mess caused by some other code.

Even with Apple, where I worked with the dev for a couple of months to fix
all of their problems, they've backslid in some later versions and done the
same thing again.

MS usually doesn't do that sort of thing with the code they supply, but it's
hard to be positive. My initial guess would be the PDFMOutlook addin, which
in various incarnations has been know to do bad things to Outlook. However,
a systematic approach is best when troubleshooting.

What I'd do is to disable completely all the addins running, including
Companion. Repeat the steps needed to get the crash and make sure no crash
is happening with no addins. Then re-enable Companion. Test again. Repeat
until you start having problems again, then you disable that last addin and
verify the problems have stopped. That should isolate the culprit.

I've seen many addins doing this, so the next one you load may have the same
problems. You just never know.

When I was initially investigating this I contacted some friends who also
have VB6 addins out there, such as the owner of SperrySoftware and their
addins all also had the same problems when a miscreant addin was running, so
you just happened to run into the problem with Companion, it could very well
have been some other addin you were using that got the blame if it was
written using VB6.

Version 2.0 of Companion is the latest version, and support was correct that
there's nothing WinZip can do to prevent or workaround the problem, since
the crash is occurring in the VB6 runtime outside of Companion's executing
code or error handling. About the only thing that could be done would be to
completely rewrite the addin using C++ or managed code. And then the crash
or hang would still occur, it just wouldn't get blamed on that addin but
some other one.

 

[overly frustrated]

Thanks for sticking with me on this one Ken.

Unfortunately I have tried your troubleshooting. I have disabled every
add-in in Outlook and it seems to be stable. When I only activate the WinZip
E-mail Companion, Outlook still seems stable. When I exit out of Outlook and
go back it in, Outlook will crash as soon as I try to send an email. I check
under Trust Center and no other add-ins were active except for WinZip E-mail
Companion.
We have removed Adobe Acrobat 8 completely off of a couple machines and
Outlook still crashes. I'm assuming this would also remove the PDFMOutlook
add-in.
So what I'm understanding from your last reply, our only course of action is
to rewrite the addin using C++.
Our company has paid for a few thousand licenses of this add-in. WinZip has
opened the door for us if we want a refund, but we don't really want to take
this avenue:

If you have purchased E-Mail Companion and this issue would casue you to
want a refund, that can certainly be arranged. If you have been evaluating
the Companion you may want to consider using something else to meet your
needs.

Any thoughts or opinions from you would be greatly appreciated Ken.

 

[Ken Slovak - [MVP - Outlook]]

So with only Companion running as an addin Outlook crashes when you send an
email? Does it crash also if you set Companion to not zip your attachments
(don't zip automatically in the Send Options tab of the Companion settings
dialog)? Using it that way eliminates Companion from the sending equation.

Are there any error log entries in the Companion error logs?

It would be a huge undertaking to rewrite Companion in C++, even if you
could get hold of the source code from WinZip. I wouldn't do it, I prefer
not to code in C++.

What I'd probably do is open a support case with MS on this, they can read
the crash logs whereas that's very hard for anyone else to do especially
since they won't release the Outlook symbols. I'd get a crash dump and have
them evaluate it and see where the crash is happening and why.

It can be all sorts of weird things. For example, some software, I forget
exactly what, was or is being installed by Dell. It replaced Kernel32.dll
with one that had hooks into its own code. If that code was disabled or
uninstalled and kernel32 wasn't restored then it caused a crash in the VB6
runtime when the runtime called into one specific kernel32 method.
Everything else worked OK in kernel32 but that one call. MS found that one
for me (it also turned up as a crash of Companion), but any dev should know
not to replace kernel32, it's just a horrible thing to do.

You said you purchased thousands of Companion licenses, do you see the same
problem on all user machines or only some? The only other thing would be if
only some have the problem and then finding out where they differ from users
who don't have the problem.

I run Companion here on all my 7 Office 2007 setups with no problems, and
some of those machines are very heavily loaded with various addins, so I
know this isn't a universal problem.

 

[overly frustrated]

Yes, it crashes when you send an email. It also crashes when you do not zip
your attachments. It also crashes if you don't send the email, just opening
the new mail
message window and then closing it. When you go back into Outlook it asks
weather you want to disable the WinZip add-in.
Sorry Ken, I do not know where to look for the Companion error logs. Can
you tell me the path where to look?

 

[Ken Slovak - [MVP - Outlook]]

Just opening and closing an email window crashes Outlook? Wow.

Is this on all systems or only some? Is this Office 2007 gold, SP1 or SP2?
Windows version?

The error log would be under <localAppData>\WinZip Email Companion\.

I'd like to discuss this with my contacts at WinZip and see what's going on.
Ping me back at the email address I use here for posting with some
information I can use to identify your case with the WinZip support people
so I can take this up with them. I may burn an MS support case to try to
find out what's going on.

 

[overly frustrated]

It is crashing on most desktops and laptops. We have one system that anyone
can log onto and WinZip works fine. Then we have another system that crashes
whenever someone logs on. We cannot narrow down what might be causing this.
On some machines an account will be working, as soon as we exit Outlook and
go back in, Outlook crashes with the WinZip add-in error.
We are running Microsoft Office 2003 with SP3 and Microsoft Outlook 2007
with SP2
OS is Windows XP with SP3. Sorry, don't know Office 2007 gold.
When I go to c:\Documents and Settings\<User>\Local Settings\Application
Data, there is a folder called WinZip E-mail Companion but it is empty on all
machines.