Excel ver 10 "Encounters a Problem" on starting

[Ken McLennan]

G'day there Excel People,

I'm posting this message to 2 groups, not because I expect one of
them will ignore me, but because my ISP's newsgroup service can best be
described as "sporadic". There are sometimes delays in updating the
message list. I therefore apologise to those who get the same article
twice.

I'm currently using Office XP including Excel ver 10.0.6501.0.
I've installed Office XP SP3.

A few months back, Excel started giving the "Excel has encountered
a problem" message on starting from a shortcut I'd set up. This shortcut
was simply a link to a particular workbook. The error occurred after
opening the workbook. I found that it stopped if I compiled my macros
and saved the file.

I'm currently getting a similar error message, but this time there
are no macros. It's happening from the Excel Start Menu entry and there
are no files loaded.

For various other reasons not related to Excel I have reformatted
C Drive, reinstalled Windows XP Home, and reinstalled Office. I found
that the error persisted and I couldn't open Excel.

A few Google searches led me to various versions of the problem,
but almost every entry I found related to a particular file, or type of
file.

I found only one entry where this happened with no files loaded.
The advice given was to migrate to a new user account and this I did -
Problem Soved... for about 6 or 7 hours. Then after opening one of my
files, reviewing it (made no changes) and closing Excel I found the
error had returned and I now can't open the application.

The Error Report Contents indicate:

Exception Information
Code: 0x00000a94 Flags: 0x00000000
Record: 0x00000000c0000005 Address: 0x0000000000000000

which is meaningless to me.

Previously when sending an error message to Microsoft I was taken
to a web page which told me to install SP3. This time, however, I don't
get any page opened. The message is sent and the dialogue then
disappears. I've possibly changed a setting when installing Windows and
I'll search for something like that shortly.

In the meantime, does anyone know how I can resolve this issue?
Previously Excel was rock solid and no matter how poorly my code was
written I couldn't kill the application. What can possibly now be
preventing it from opening? Has anyone seen any references to such a
thing that they could point me to?

Thanks for listening,

 

[Norman Jones]

Hi Ken,

Two suggestions, both of which you may have already tried:

1) Visit your Temp folder and delete the contents.
(Start | Run | %temp% | OK will get you there fast)

2) Visit Chip Pearson's startup problems page and try his varioius
suggestions:

http://www.cpearson.com/excel/StartupErrors.htm

 

[Ken McLennan]

G'day there Norman,

1) Visit your Temp folder and delete the contents.
(Start | Run | %temp% | OK will get you there fast)

Ok. I did that, but there was no change.

2) Visit Chip Pearson's startup problems page and try his varioius
suggestions:

http://www.cpearson.com/excel/StartupErrors.htm

Ahh... yes. I'd forgotten Chip's site. I followed his suggestion
and re-registered, but no luck. I'll have a look at his other ideas and
follow the links, but the MKB pages I've found so far haven't helped
(although I admit I've not looked at all of them. They seem to have the
odd one or two topics listed there => )

Thanks for your suggestion. I appreciate your assistance.

 

[Dave Peterson]

Maybe running Rob Bovey's code cleaner would help:
You can find it here:
http://www.appspro.com/

If it happens on multiple workbooks, you may want to read Chip's page and play
around with the *.xlb file (the toolbar file can get corrupt and do bad things).

If it only happens on one workbook, maybe that workbook is corrupted and it's
time to rebuild it.

(Although, I would have guessed that File|Open (that workbook) would have caused
the same problem.)

 

[Ken McLennan]

G'day there Dave,

Maybe running Rob Bovey's code cleaner would help:

I have a copy of Rob's code cleaner here at the moment. I've used
it previously to good effect. The problem now is that I can't open Excel
to use it.

If it happens on multiple workbooks, you may want to read Chip's page and play
around with the *.xlb file (the toolbar file can get corrupt and do bad things).

If it only happens on one workbook, maybe that workbook is corrupted and it's
time to rebuild it.

It doesn't happen on any workbook. It happens whenever I try to
open Excel with nothing in it except the 3-sheet workbook it starts up
with.

(Although, I would have guessed that File|Open (that workbook) would have caused
the same problem.)

It probably would, but I can't get that far to find out. The
application never opens to give me a File menu.

Thanks for your assistance. I don't even know where to start
looking. Any suggestions are more than welcome.


See ya

 

[Dave Peterson]

Since it's happening everytime you start excel...

Guess #1:

You may want to try cleaning up your windows Temp folder.

Close excel (and any thing else running--just to be safe)
windows start button|run
%temp%

and delete all the files/folders you can.

Then test it to see if that helps.


Guess #2:

Close excel
windows start button|search (or find)
*.xlb
(Look for hidden files in hidden folders, too)

Rename all of them to *.xlbOLD.

Start excel normally and see if it works ok.

If yes, then dump those *.xlbOLD files and customize your toolbar at your
leisure.

If there's still problems, then close excel and rename the *.xlbOLD files back
to *.xlb (no harm, no foul!).

(I have more faith in guess #2! Lots of people have had trouble with *.xlb
files.)

 

[Ken McLennan]

G'day there One & All,

Many thanks to those who have assisted me with this problem. For
those who are interested, and for those who aren't, I have now resolved
this problem. I like to think that it was my imaginative swearing and
cursing techniques which brought about a solution, but I must admit it
was the advice given on this page:

http://www.markhenri.com/excel/stdtroubleshooting.html

Some of the steps I had already taken as a result of advice from
this group, but I needed to remove & reinstall the registry entries as
cited on the above page. Having done that, all is plain sailing ...until
the next time, that is.

See ya,
and thanks again.