Open Office does not work with Vista

Submitted by Euphorion on July 14, 2008 - 2:30am

Hallo

I am running Vista with Service Pack 1 in German on a Fujitsu XI-2550 and OpenOffice does not run. When I start OpenOffice or an OpenOffice application (e.g. Writer) from my stick, the splash screen comes up and after a few seconds Vista informs me that OpenOffice no longer works and creates a report to send to Microsoft and I will be informed later.

The OpenOffice Version that I am using is 2.4.1 US-English. This version works fine on my old Laptop with Windows XP Service Pack 3.

I have many other Portable applications on the stick such as Firefox 3.0 Thunderbird, Filezilla, Virualdub, BoncEnc, Audacity etc and they all work fine with Vista. I have tried OpenOffice 2.4.1 German and this also does not work. I have tried the 2.4.0 to no avail.

I have tried switching the User Rights Control on and off so that I do not have to confirm Administration privileges, this did not help either.

OpenOffice 3.0 Beta runs under Vista so long as I use the OpenOffice File Dialogs for opening and saving, this windows versions cause OpenOffice Beta to hang.

Does anyone have an idea what could be wrong? Does OpenOffice require specific settings or services in Vista ?

Thanks in advance
Euphorion


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Some more informations needed ...

... in order to give You an answer.

OOo Portable is tested on Win Vista Home Premium with Fujitsu Siemens Xi2550 (no additional changes or modifications), so this should be work for You too.

User rights should be work, no admin rights needed.

Are You able to run /App/openoffice/program/soffice.exe directly ?

Do You installed a local copy of OpenOffice.org 2.x perhaps with the quickstarter?

You've paid for Software more or less?
What You need is OSS!

More Info OpenOffice does not work under Vista

Hallo MarkoMLM

Thank you for your reply, it sounds as though you are on the right track.

Here is the whole story:

Originally I had Vista Home Premium on the machine without SP1. Usually I have a local installation of all Portable Apps including OpenOffice on the hard disk, i.e a local installation of OpenOffice with Quickstarter. I always start the Quickstarter minimized via an entry in the Autostart folder. This worked well with 2.4.0 until Vista was broke by a sticky Update.

I then reinstalled Vista on my machine and updated it to SP1 (SP1 having been released in the meanwhile). I then reinstalled the newly released 2.4.1 onto the hard disk as a "local" installation. I also have the Quickstarter running as described above via Autostart. When I try to start Writer or Calc (Hard Disk installation) the Splash screen appears, with a subsequent error message from windows that OpenOffice is no longer working and a report will be sent to Microsoft. Owing to the fact that I could not get 2.4.1 to work I installed locally OpenOffice 3.0 Beta. I have a 4GB Stick will all my personal Portable Progs and Data, if I try to start Writer from this Stick under Vista, I get the same result that OpenOffice does not Work.

Currently I am not able to check if I can start the soffice.exe directly because I am at work, when I get home I will try this and report back. I will also make a test in that I will stop the quickstarter and try to start 2.4.1.

I don't know whether this is relevant, I have a Linux Partition on the machine (Ubuntu 8.04) and use the ext2ifs driver to access the Linux partition from windows. But I cannot imagine that this driver should be the cause of the problem. Normally I use Linux and occasionally Vista especially when doing HD-Video work.

Thanks so far
Kind regards
Euphorion

More Info Part 2

Hallo MarkoMLM

I have carried out the following on my Fujitsu Laptop. I have stopped the quickstarter and have tried to start the soffice.exe directly with following result. The Blue OpenOffice Loading screen appeared and the loading bargraph filled to approx 50% and then stopped with the windows error message. The same result occurred when trying to start swriter.exe and scalc.exe

I am now at a loss what I can do next to rectify the situation.

Kind regards
Euphorion

Could be a runtime problem ...

Keep in mind, that the default set for the shutdown button of Your laptop (like mine too) is not shutdown, its Powersave.

Vista needs sometime a real reeboot to handle with new or double runtimes.
Could be, that there are some unsolved problems as the result of an incomplete runtime intallation.

Please install a local copy of OpenOffice.org 2.4.1, reboot Your laptop and try to start the local version. If the local version starts, close the quickstarten and try to start the Portable.

You've paid for Software more or less?
What You need is OSS!

Mine doesn't work on Vista either

I was runnning Open Office from my thumb drive on XP SP3 with no problem. When I tried it on my new Vista Home Premium machine, I got an error message: program could not be found openoffice\program\soffice.exe. The "read me" text that accompanies Open Office says nothing about it working with Vista. I uninstalled and reinstalled it to no avail. I hope v3 fixes the problem.

Tom Buoy

OpenOffice.org Portable and the orginal version works on vista .

... there are some problems on /vista) machines without msvs runtimes.

This is still fixed with Openoffice.org 3 Beta 2 Portable and will be fixed in the next 2.x version too.

You've paid for Software more or less?
What You need is OSS!

The same here

I'm using Vista, with no administrative rights. I installed the Portable Apps Suite in my USB (a LG one), and I'm getting the same error message. Every part of OO doesn't work, but every other portable app I launch, works flawlessly.

OpenOffice.org Portable version?

As I've said it before:

There are some Problems on some Vista/XP machines with OpenOffice.org Portable 2.4.1 and 3 Beta 2. But that is not because You have no admin rights, cause this is on Vista default.

Please try Version 3 Beta 2 and tell us if it will work for You.
If this issue is fixed with this version and a bugfix release for 2.4.1 is really needed there will be one.

If the error is still present with 3 Beta 2 please give us some more informations about Your configuration.

You've paid for Software more or less?
What You need is OSS!

Vista Trouble

Installed Open Office on flash drive and works on all computers with the exception of my HP Laptop running Vista Home premium 32 bit just keeps crashing all other programs run fine from Portable apps. Open Office no matter what Verizon starts to open then crashes every time. have tried all the apps in open office and they all crash. Everything is up to date Java etc In fact that's were i got the most resent copy from was from sun java 6.o for win vista and along with it came the option for open office suite install. I thought this should do the trick but same problem Crash crash crash.

Any help to fix this would be great.

Brownbear Ranch Alaska

Please use the final version of OpenOffice.org 3 Portable...

... this will be work fine (like Pre-Release 2 too)

You've paid for Software more or less?
What You need is OSS!