Problems saving a 8mb .ppt to an offline folder.

[Guineapig1]

Hi everyone!

I have a question.

I have a user on Office 2000 sp3 and Windows 2000. When he is working with a
PowerPoint presentation and tries to save his changes while offline (to the
offline folder), Powerpoint stops responding and can't be shutdown. The save
progress bar goes across on the status bar and just stays there at the end.
I have to reboot the machine to end the "hang".

I have checked that he has plenty of space left in his Offline Files cache
and have tried reinstalling office. I have also tested this out on a
different notebook with different files and get the same results. It appears
to happen when the files are larger than 8Mb.

I have found some people having the same problem on the net, but never found
a solution.
Though I found a microsoft case number concerning tis problem: srx060605602291


regards
Lars

 

[John Wilson]

Has he got windows 2000 SP 4 installed
--
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Did that answer the question / help?
_____________________________
John Wilson
Microsoft Certified Office Specialist
http://www.technologytrish.co.uk/ppttipshome.html

 

[Guineapig1]

Yes. sp4 is installed.

Has he got windows 2000 SP 4 installed
--
-----
Did that answer the question / help?
_____________________________
John Wilson
Microsoft Certified Office Specialist
http://www.technologytrish.co.uk/ppttipshome.html

 

[John Wilson]

I dont have 2000 but I'm told by the boss lady that you need the hotfix from
KB870593

Unfortunately I can find no reference on microsoft site so you'll have to
ring them.
--
-----
Did that answer the question / help?
_____________________________
John Wilson
Microsoft Certified Office Specialist
http://www.technologytrish.co.uk/ppttipshome.html

 

[Kathy Jacobs]

Does turning off fast saves help any?

--
Kathryn Jacobs, Microsoft MVP PowerPoint and OneNote
Author of Kathy Jacobs on PowerPoint - Available now from Holy Macro! Books
Get PowerPoint and OneNote information at www.onppt.com

I believe life is meant to be lived. But:
if we live without making a difference, it makes no difference that we lived

 

[Guineapig1]

srry no i don't,

right now the problem has escalated so we are trying with microsoft support.

 

[Echo S]

I'd love to know what the resolution is.

 

[david.jade]

Did anyone ever get a fix for this? I have a client who is experiencing this
same issue with large powerpoint files and offline files.

thanks,
david

 

[trounce]

Did anyone ever get a fix for this? I have a client who is experiencing this
same issue with large powerpoint files and offline files.

thanks,
david

I have been having this problem intermittently for the past two years,
and have still not found a fix. It happens with a different powerpoint
file every two months or so, and I use powerpoint when offline with
large files extensively - probably saving tens of different large
powerpoint files while offline each week. I have been looking for
references to this problem during that time and this is the first one I
have seen.

It only seems to happen for a very few powerpoint files - all large -
but most large powerpoint files I save do not have this problem. When a
file starts to have this problem it causes repeated crashes of
powerpoint even after cold reboots, which each then cause an complete
freeze the whole Windows XP OS.

When it does happen, as noted above, powerpoint freezes close to the
end of the save progress bar. However, it does not just crash
powerpoint. It then becomes impossible to force powerpoint to close -
it ignores 'end task' - and all other applications (Excel, IE, Firefox,
Windows Explorer) quickly become 'not responding' and also then ignore
'end task'. When this powerpoint freeze happens I quickly try to save
unsaved work in other applications as quickly as possible before the
whole machine becomes unresponsive. After the freeze the machine
becomes impossible to shut down; I have to hold down the power button
to switch it off.

Powerpoint is the only application I know that can take down Windows XP
in this way. I didn't think this should be possible, so I'm guessing a
bug in offline files that powerpoint triggers.

Windows XP SP2, all latest updates
PowerPoint 2003 SP2, all latest updates
My Documents redirected to a server share, with entire shell folder
taken offline
Only occurs intermittently during saving of some large PowerPoint files
(>5MB)
Saving to a subfolder of My Documents while offline
Does not occur when saving the same files to a local (non offline)
drive, e.g. C:

I would love to know if there is a fix available - I have lost so much
powerpoint work over the years due to this bug it isn't funny.

trounce at gmail dot com

 

[david.jade]

There is a unpublished hotfix for this but it's a tough one to get. After
hours on the phone with MS I eventually got a hotfix that completely resolved
this. This was not intermittent for me, it happened every single time I was
offline. I was told that this hotfix was scheduled to be included in SP3 for
XP (whenever that is).

The KB that documents this is KB870593. Note that you will not find this KB
online anywhere. In fact it seems that some of the MS support folks can't
always see it either as most of the MS people I talked with could not find
this hotfix. It took me over 2 hours on the phone getting transfered from
group to group (about 6 different people) before someone could figure this
out. Eventually I was connected with someone who could just magically see it,
knew where to find the fix, and quickly sent me the hotfix.

There is also this existing case number that references this file:
SRX050720601405 This is a reference that I found on the internet to someone
else (Sean ???) who had this issue and also received the hotfix that resolved
this. I just got this hotfix less than 2 weeks ago so perhaps if you call
someone there will remember or have notes on this. Perhaps with this case
number and KB you will have luck.

btw, this is definetely a Windows XP issue and not a Powerpoint (the hotfix
was for the mrxsmb.sys system file). But I think it was actually someone in
the powerpoint group who sent me the hotfix so you might want to start there.

Good luck,
david