"problem will be fixed in upcoming Beta Office 2007 build"

[Greg Gates]

We are really pleased with the improved functions incorporated in Office
2007, but as we all have seen, if you are a small business or power user,
keeping Outlook 2007 running between crashing, is a challenge.

I now use a 30 second simple egg timer, positioned in front of my keyboard,
so that I hit the "save" icon I have in my personal ribbon, so I lose the
minimum amount of work when it crashes. I also set the save timing to every
minute for word and outlook. That seems to help too.

But we also utilize Outlook about 16/7/365 in our e-commerce business. So
we really pound on Outllook! So our daily experience will be much greater
and more frequent than the average user.

We know it is a Beta, and we should expect lots of hassles. We had the Beta
releases of the last two Office major releases XP and 2003. Neither of them
crashed in Outlook anywhere near 2007. I would say the crashes are quadruple
the last two releases.

When an crash occurs we get this message:
"this problem will be fixed in an upcoming Beta 2007 build"

Here is our question:
Does anyone know when Microsoft might release a new update of Office 2007
Beta?



Just knowing when some of our crashes would be fixed would be great.

Regards,

Greg Gates

PS: as we posted in another thread, we are extemely impressed that an Office
2007 person would call to hear our hassles and suggestions regarding new
Quickparts versus old autotext. So the above post is not a knock, just
looking for improvement and not having already keyed stuff disapear [not
saved yet].

 

[Roady [MVP]]

Don't use any add-ins that aren't designed for Outlook 2007 or virus
scanners that integrate with Outlook and you'll find that the BETA itself is
quite stable. In addition to that I highly recommend recreating your e-mail
profile after any upgrade of Outlook.
http://www.howto-outlook.com/faq/newprofile.htm

I wouldn't expect a new Public Release (Technical Refresh, Beta3 or RC1)any
time soon. At least not before Summer end.

--
Robert Sparnaaij [MVP-Outlook]
Coauthor, Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003


-----
"Greg Gates" <greg AT ringdesigner.com> wrote in message
We are really pleased with the improved functions incorporated in Office
2007, but as we all have seen, if you are a small business or power user,
keeping Outlook 2007 running between crashing, is a challenge.

I now use a 30 second simple egg timer, positioned in front of my keyboard,
so that I hit the "save" icon I have in my personal ribbon, so I lose the
minimum amount of work when it crashes. I also set the save timing to every
minute for word and outlook. That seems to help too.

But we also utilize Outlook about 16/7/365 in our e-commerce business. So
we really pound on Outllook! So our daily experience will be much greater
and more frequent than the average user.

We know it is a Beta, and we should expect lots of hassles. We had the Beta
releases of the last two Office major releases XP and 2003. Neither of them
crashed in Outlook anywhere near 2007. I would say the crashes are
quadruple
the last two releases.

When an crash occurs we get this message:
"this problem will be fixed in an upcoming Beta 2007 build"

Here is our question:
Does anyone know when Microsoft might release a new update of Office 2007
Beta?



Just knowing when some of our crashes would be fixed would be great.

Regards,

Greg Gates

PS: as we posted in another thread, we are extemely impressed that an Office
2007 person would call to hear our hassles and suggestions regarding new
Quickparts versus old autotext. So the above post is not a knock, just
looking for improvement and not having already keyed stuff disapear [not
saved yet].

 

[Greg Gates]

Roady [MVP] wrote "Don't use any add-ins that aren't designed for Outlook
2007 or virus scanners that integrate with Outlook and you'll find that the
BETA itself is
quite stable."


Roady [MVP]

Thank you for the quick reply. Unfortunately there are no add ons or
virus software on the PC that I am using. Plus this PC is an Intel 3.2 dual
core on an Intel 955 mother board with a gig of ram and one of the fastest
ATI video boards out there. In short it is quick.

Again, we pound on Outlook alone up to 16 hours a day on this PC . So we
are not the average user. So we would have to strongly disagree from our
first hand experience that this Office 2007 Beta release for Outlook is
"quite stable". At least not from the e-commerce business side. It is far
from it, at least for the PC for an e-commerce business that is pounding
Outlook 2007 all day.

Since we are doing the 30 second saves, it is only irritating, not more.
Microsoft always improves, so we will wait until the updates of the Beta.
Plus if it is "quite stable", why is the release just been pushed back from
fall ? [That is what we heard on the news, correct us if that is not the
case?]

But you have answered our question as to when to look for improvement [i.e.
end of summer maybe]

Warmest regards,

Greg

 

[Patrick Schmid]

Hi Greg,

When and how do you experience crashes? Roady is right that the beta is
rather stable and crashes seldom.
The main reason Office 2007 was pushed back is performance issues, and
the Outlook beta for sure has some serious performance problems.

Patrick Schmid

 

[Greg Gates]

Patrick,

Hello again! You will not remember, but you helped us greatly on several
occasions in the past (different stuff)!



Maybe I am using the wrong term by using "crash" for this Outlook situation.


What I am referring to, happens when keying either a new message or replying
to a received message:
--You will be working away, (always HTML mode), keying along,
--you click to leave Outlook for a moment to verify or read something you
need for the message you are working on (like to just look at an excel
workbook you have open)
--you click back to your Outlook message
--you click to get to the spot where you were just keying, but
--it feels like you are clicking on glass, as you can't key, highlight for
copy/paste, click to get a cursor placement, almost frozen.
--then by going away again from Outlook, sometimes going back, all will be
fine, and you see a cursor.
--but many times, you will get an "error" message that Outlook has
encountered a problem, and needs to shut down and recover your work.
--usually asked to send an error report to Microsoft
--sometimes you get a message that Microsoft is aware of the problem, and
will fix it in a future Beta release (that's what prompted my original
question to start this thread as to when is the next Beta update?)
--Outlook then shuts down all by itself, and magically re-launches itself
with no effort by me
--9 out of 10 times, Outlook re-launches both the Outlook application AND
ALL the messages I was working on, (even the reply message that I was keying
into that started the freeze up situation).
--never ever happens in just a text mode, but working e-commerce, we want
nice looking message formats that the HTML format provides (images, colored
fonts etc etc).

Hope some of that makes sense? Let me know if I need to clarify any points?

Warmest regards,

Greg Gates
www.ringdesigner.com

 

[Patrick Schmid]

Hi Greg,

Hello again! You will not remember, but you helped us greatly on several
occasions in the past (different stuff)!

I remember

Maybe I am using the wrong term by using "crash" for this Outlook situation.

Sounds right the way you use it.

What I am referring to, happens when keying either a new message or replying
to a received message:
--You will be working away, (always HTML mode), keying along,
--you click to leave Outlook for a moment to verify or read something you
need for the message you are working on (like to just look at an excel
workbook you have open)
--you click back to your Outlook message
--you click to get to the spot where you were just keying, but
--it feels like you are clicking on glass, as you can't key, highlight for
copy/paste, click to get a cursor placement, almost frozen.
--then by going away again from Outlook, sometimes going back, all will be
fine, and you see a cursor.
--but many times, you will get an "error" message that Outlook has
encountered a problem, and needs to shut down and recover your work.
--usually asked to send an error report to Microsoft
--sometimes you get a message that Microsoft is aware of the problem, and
will fix it in a future Beta release (that's what prompted my original
question to start this thread as to when is the next Beta update?)
--Outlook then shuts down all by itself, and magically re-launches itself
with no effort by me
--9 out of 10 times, Outlook re-launches both the Outlook application AND
ALL the messages I was working on, (even the reply message that I was keying
into that started the freeze up situation).
--never ever happens in just a text mode, but working e-commerce, we want
nice looking message formats that the HTML format provides (images, colored
fonts etc etc).

A bit of this sounds familiar. Outlook has some major performance issues
and I have found myself staring at a not working Outlook quite a few
times before. Generally after a few seconds to minutes, Outlook comes
back though (it works a lot on the harddrive during that time). When
your Outlook feels like glass, what does the Window title look like? Do
you see a window title that has the QAT there or do you see the default
Windows XP window title which cuts the office button in half?

Does the message that it was fixed in later beta versions give any hint
as to what could have caused the issue?

Whenever you crash and send the report to Microsoft, there should be an
event added. If you go into Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Event
Viewer, Application, you should see an error event by Microsoft Office
12 around the time of the crash. Right after that (time wise, which
means it will be above the error event) is an information event from
Microsoft Office 12. That event contains a bucket number. That number
indicates a particular crash and based on the number, MS can identify
whether something has already been fixed or not. Could you look at 10 or
so of those events and post all the bucket numbers (without duplicates)?
It would be also helpful to know which ones gave you the response that
they have already been fixed. I'll see if I can't get a response from
Microsoft what causes these crashes and therefore give you some ideas on
how to avoid them.

Patrick Schmid

 

[kevinsaucier]

Patrick,

My problems with Outlook are slightly different but related. Every
time my computer goes to screensaver or power save on the monitor,
Outlook crashes. I've never gotten the message that it will be fixed
in a future beta and I report the issue every time.

I've checked the event logs and every bucket number is the same and is
caused by the situation described above. I do see some serious
performance issues, but it never really crashes except for the
situation already described.

Here is the info from the event log:

Bucket 291557667, bucket table 1, faulting application outlook.exe,
version 12.0.4017.1006, stamp 445b7cf7, faulting module
colleagueimport.dll, version 12.0.4017.1005, stamp 44582714, debug? 0,
fault address 0x0000ad8e

If you are able to find anything out about that, it would be great.
I'm getting into the habit of restarting Outlook every time I unlock my
computer, but I'd love to not have to.

Thanks,

Kevin

 

[kevinsaucier]

Patrick,

My problems with Outlook are slightly different but related. Every
time my computer goes to screensaver or power save on the monitor,
Outlook crashes. I've never gotten the message that it will be fixed
in a future beta and I report the issue every time.

I've checked the event logs and every bucket number is the same and is
caused by the situation described above. I do see some serious
performance issues, but it never really crashes except for the
situation already described.

Here is the info from the event log:

Bucket 291557667, bucket table 1, faulting application outlook.exe,
version 12.0.4017.1006, stamp 445b7cf7, faulting module
colleagueimport.dll, version 12.0.4017.1005, stamp 44582714, debug? 0,
fault address 0x0000ad8e

If you are able to find anything out about that, it would be great.
I'm getting into the habit of restarting Outlook every time I unlock my
computer, but I'd love to not have to.

Thanks,

Kevin

 

[Patrick Schmid]

I assume this is with WinXP Pro?
Have you disabled all your add-ins already (Tools, Trust Center,
Add-Ins)?

Can you type msinfo32 into Start, Run and then File, Save (might take 10
mins)? Then zip up the file and email it to me (you can get my email
from my website). As you have clear repro steps, I'll submit it as bug
to MS.


Thanks,

Patrick Schmid

 

[Greg Gates]

Patrick,

In the midst of keying a message tonight, my Outlook 2007 burped and froze.
So this time, I did screen captures to show some of the Outlook symptoms.

I put those screen capture images and some narrative on a unique page on our
site.

The URL is http://www.ringdesigner.com/4MSMVP070706pm.htm

Hope it helps MicroSoft or some of you MVP types to figure out what is
ocurring?.

Greg Gates

www.ringdesigner.com

 

[Patrick Schmid]

Hi Greg,

Thanks for that! Can you look up the bucket number for that particular
crash and post it as well? MS really needs that number to tell us
anything about what happened here.
Can you leave that webpage up for a while please?

Thanks,

Patrick Schmid

 

[Greg Gates]

[1] Glad to leave the web page up if it helps to make Outlook even better!


[2] I forgot to mention, and wanted to add. When Outlook is still
frozen, even after killing Outlook as an "end task" program on the Task
Manager's "Application's" tab, the CPU shows usage to be 60% to 100%, yet
nothing is running with any program running on the PC.

Ironically, nothing is showing as running on the Task Manager's
"Application's" tab, but what is showing taking up CPU 60% to 100% on the
Task Manager's Processes’ tab, is a totally different story.


[3] There are two processes that show as using all but a couple percentage
points of the CPU. Those two processes are are OUTLOOK.EXE and something
like systemidleprocess.exe.

I will watch for the correct program name shown next time for that system
idle task, as it is running on the CPU at breakaway speed.

That system idle task disappears as running (and the CPU returns to normal)
if you "end task" the OUTLOOK.EXE in the Task Manager's Processes tab.

Also remember, at any point in this process, in the freeze situation, when
OUTLOOK.EXE is showing in the Task Manager's Processes’ tab, OUTLOOK IS NOT
showing up as running on in the Task Manager's Application's tab!!


[4] Need some instructions how to locate/capture the "bucket number". Glad
to watch for it.
--
Greg Gates
www.ringdesigner.com


PS: I will add this infromation to the web page

 

[Patrick Schmid]

Regarding [4], please see my original reply to your first post in this
thread. Instructions are in there.

[3] System Idle Process represents no CPU usage. Task Manager just shows
that process so that the percentage column always add to 100% CPU usage.

[2] Have you let Outlook run for a longer time before you killed it?
Like a couple of minutes to half an hour?

Patrick Schmid

 

[Greg Gates]

Question from Patrick Schmid:
Have you let Outlook run for a longer time before you killed it? Like a
couple of minutes to half an hour?

[1] Several times I have let it run for an hour or more. Come back Outlook
2007 is still frozen.

[2] After killing "end task" on the Application's tab of Task Manager, have
also let OUTLOOK.EXE show on the Processes tab (while not showing at all on
the Applications' tab). And OUTLOOK.EXE CPU percentage ranges from high 30's
to high sixties with no one sitting at the PC doing anything.

[3] I just added a screen capture (on the web page) of the CPU percentage
after a recent Outlook freeze. Scroll to the section titled "07/08/06
[2]" on this page URL
http://www.ringdesigner.com/4MSMVP070706pm.htm


I will look for the other information you gave us later. Got to finish and
pack for FedEx, a bunch of diamond engagement rings. Have to still pay the
bills! LOL