Excel keeps crashing (Office 2000/SR-1a)

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Excel keep crashing with the following information listed below. No workbooks are open, except the hidden personal.xls (with macro’s saved in it). It is minimized, with no other activity happening on the pc. There is no rhyme or reason to the frequency of these crashes, however it seems more likely to happen shortly after reboot, after opening one workbook, then saving and exiting the workbook, leaving excel open. I searched the MS Knowledgebase to no avail. Any help would be appreciated. I copied the crash info from the last three times it crashed. Thanks for any help anyone can give.

Tom

—————- START OF CRASH INFO——————
EXCEL caused an invalid page fault in
module EXCEL.EXE at 0177:30078c9f.
Registers:
EAX=0215322c CS=0177 EIP=30078c9f EFLGS=00010202
EBX=02141cc0 SS=017f ESP=0062eec4 EBP=0062eee4
ECX=00404478 DS=017f ESI=0089db10 FS=7167
EDX=00af4500 ES=017f EDI=00000000 GS=0000
Bytes at CS:EIP:
0f b7 58 14 8b 0d 54 eb 69 30 3b cb 7c 24 0f b7
Stack dump:
00000001 00b21698 02141cc0 300944f7 00670ffc 0089db10 00000000 0062ef00 0062ef00 3015db99 00404550 00000001 00000000 00000010 00404550 0062f05c

EXCEL caused an invalid page fault in
module EXCEL.EXE at 0177:30078c9f.
Registers:
EAX=01be13f4 CS=0177 EIP=30078c9f EFLGS=00010202
EBX=01c545b4 SS=017f ESP=0062eec4 EBP=0062eee4
ECX=00403fa8 DS=017f ESI=0089da58 FS=51e7
EDX=00af4500 ES=017f EDI=00000000 GS=0000
Bytes at CS:EIP:
0f b7 58 14 8b 0d 54 eb 69 30 3b cb 7c 24 0f b7
Stack dump:
00000001 00b21698 01c545b4 bff728a2 01c50188 0089da58 00000000 0062ef00 0062ef00 3015db99 00404080 00000001 00000000 00000010 00404080 0062f05c

EXCEL caused an invalid page fault in
module EXCEL.EXE at 0177:30078c9f.
Registers:
EAX=01ac27b4 CS=0177 EIP=30078c9f EFLGS=00010206
EBX=00b0099c SS=017f ESP=0062eec4 EBP=0062eee4
ECX=00403fa8 DS=017f ESI=0089da58 FS=7177
EDX=00af4500 ES=017f EDI=00000000 GS=0000
Bytes at CS:EIP:
0f b7 58 14 8b 0d 54 eb 69 30 3b cb 7c 24 0f b7
Stack dump:
00000001 00b21698 00b0099c bff728a2 00af92b8 0089da58 00000000 0062ef00 0062ef00 3015db99 00404080 00000001 00000000 00000010 00404080 0062f05c

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Hi Tom,
Does it crash if you open Excel without the Personal.xls open?
Have you tried a Detect and Repair on it?

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Tom

It is hard to really determine what goes on when Windows crashes. You could have so many problems and each one will shadow the other. Its unlikely but you could have a bad memory chip, or a bad workbook, or a bad Excel file. All of these will produce just about the same result.

OK do the following:

1) Move the Personal.XLS out of its place and rename it something else, just in case.
2) Start MS-Excel and work with it and see how often it will crash.
3) Export all the modules with code to a text file(s) and then
4) Reimport the modules exported in #3 back into a new workbook. In essence recreate the Personal.XLS and there are utilities that allow you to clean up your projects. Then
5) Save it in its original place and then
6) Work with Excel and see how often it crashes.

This procedure will eliminate the Personal.XLS as being a corrupted workbook. But if you really want to save time, reinstall Excel and be done with it.

Wassim
PS the error dump is not that helpful, I can see that Excel.exe was the cause but why is unknown.

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I have now done the following:
Unhid & closed personal.xls – still crashes
Replaced personal.xls with a clean file – still crashes
Detect & repair Office – still crashes

I am going to try to reinstall Office. Any additional input would be appreciated. I wondered about a bad memory module, however, I have no other applications with issues. I would think that if I had a RAM related problem, I would have issues in other applications as well.

Thanks,

Tom

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Before re-installing, try a shot in the dark.

From the start menu select Run and enter

Excel.exe /regserver

You may need to include the full path Excel.exe. That should reset your Excel registry settings which may have gone awry.

Andrew C

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Tom

RAM is unlikely since the Power Up test would have detected it, but I gave you a example of what can go wrong that looks as if it was something else.

Reinstalling will be a good idea, but it might mask what the real problem is

So try all options first and don’t use the Perosnal.xls workbook, and see how much crashing goes on. If it does not crash you know its a bad workbook.

Also test your code, it may fill the stack and that tends to crash Windows or at least make it suseptable.

Good Luck.

Wassim

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Attempted regserver … didn’t help. Before I reinstall … will I need to reinstall SR-1 after I reinstall?

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OK … I have now done the following:

Reinstalled Office (I did *not* uninstall first)
Opened excel without using/opening personal.xls

Program still continues to crash … ?!?!

I am ok as long as I leave a workbook open, even a blank workbook … do I have you all stumped yet? I sure am. ;-(

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It seems that the exe file itself is somehow corrupted. A deinstall and reinstall might cure it. (The over the top reinstall should not have changed the position.) Otherwise, you MAY have to resort to scorching the earth and putting the OS in again. That is not my favorite advice, but an Office deinstall can still leave quite a few stray bits around. (E.G. You can’t successfully install Office 97 once you’ve had Office 2000 on the OS – at least if you’re going to be using VBA.) HTH

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Tom,
Do you have the Analysis toolpak add-in installed and enabled? If so, try unloading it and see if that helps. I have found problems with that particular add-in, though as far as I can tell it was due to a customised worksheet menu bar (I guess something in the add-in’s startup code was looking for something that wasn’t where it expected it to be).

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I replaced the excel.exe file with a known good file off my laptop … still crashes. hmmm. Any recommendations (short of a complete format and reinstall)?

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Make sure you don’t have anything unexpected in the XLSTART folder.
If you are using profiles on the PC i.e. different Users, make sure you check the XLSTART folder for the profile you are using. Note that the contents of an XLSTART folder are NOT removed if you reinstall or use Excels repair feature!
I solved similar crashes by removing addins that interfered with my setup.

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Just another thought – when you exit Excel gracefully it will update its MRU list – thats the Most Recently Used file list that you see when you click File-Open from the Excel menu in the top panel.
This MRU is also not ‘lost’ if you re-install – which means if there is a problem with it your a bit stuck.
You could change the setting to 0 and try to ‘clear’ it perhaps???

zeddy

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Another shot in the dark but have you

1 – virus checked your machine?
2 – pressed “ctrl-alt-del” and shut down everything but the most essential items before opening it?

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Try opening Excel without any addins or hidden workbooks:

Start, Run,
“C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOfficeExcel.exe” /Automation

Note you may have to change the path.

If your error disappears, there is either an add-in or a (hidden) workbook that is loaded upon XL’s start, which bothers you.

– Try locating the XLSTART directory, move everything from there.
– In XL: Tools, Addins, note the ones checked and uncheck them one at the time, each time restarting XL
– In XL, Tools, options, general. Check if a path is entered after “Alternate startup file location”. Clear it.

Lastly, sometimes the toolbar customization file gets corrupted. try renamiing the file(s) with extension .xlb to another extension.

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I have determined that if I disable the Autosave add-in (the only add-in I have installed), the program does not crash. I have become accustomed to relying on the autosave, and would hate to have to trust my not-so-good memory to save my work periodically. That being said … any ideas on whether or not this problem is fixable? Thanks to *everybody* who has helped so far.

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FWIW I stopped using Autosave after I got fed up with it disabling the contents of the clipboard during a paste operation. One thing that has always helped is the Ctrl+S keyboard shortcut combination. It somehow requires less mental regearing than dragging the mouse over to the Save icon. HTH

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I have learnt NOT to rely on XL’s ancient and oversimplified Autosave option (still dating from XL4!!!)and wrote my own:

Autosafe.zip, downloadable at
http://www.bmsltd.ie/mvp%5B/url%5D

I’ve heard, that microsoft did a nice job copying my add-in’s specifications into their latest Excel XP recovery function.

Edited Mar 13th 2004 to update link

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Problem fixed! … sort of …

I went into the Autosave options and selected “Save Active Workbook Only” rather than “Save All Open Workbooks”. This seems to have worked around my problem. Since I am normally only working on one workbook at a time, this fix should suffice nicely. Thanks to all who helped!

Also, as to the Autosafe add-in mentioned … I tried installing, however, I have a networked PC and the downloadable version will not work on a networked pc. It appears as though a network version of the add-in is available however after emailing the author.

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Hi Franz,

<>

Yes, it is, but with restriction. For business use I charge a small license & processing fee.

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