Addin causes Microsoft Office apps to want to start in Safe Mode

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Addin causes Microsoft Office apps to want to start in Safe Mode
Problem with Addin for Word / Excel / Outlook 
Michael McMahon




Posts: 56
 Joined: 2005-05-03
Hi There,

I'm working on some issues that I have been grappling with for a while now. They are to do with our Addin which is installed on a terminal server. The addin works in Outlook / Excel / Word (Office 2003) and adds toolbar buttons.

Recently we shimmed/signed our addin and that resolved some issues with the addin not loading, however we are still having problems with the office apps wanting to start in safe mode. What I mean is you get a message when trying to start the app saying (for instance with Outlook):

Outlook failed to start correctly last time. Starting Outlook in safe mode will help you correct or isolate a startup problem in order to successfully start the program. Some functionality may be disabled in this mode.

Do you want to start Outlook in safe mode?

It happens for all three office apps. What is interesting is that it only seems to happen every second time you start the office app. We tell our users to click "No" (i.e. don't start in safe mode) but they're getting sick of seeing the error message as you would expect.

I have had a look at the registry entries that are in the registry and it looks like there's some old entries there from previous versions of our product (i.e. there's old registry entries pointing to the office addin when now we use a shim and only the shim registry entries should be installed I guess). Do you think this is the likely cause of the problem?

I tried to verify whether the registry entries were the cause by removing them for my own user account, but even after they're gone I still get the safe mode prompts.

If you have any ideas on what to do about this they would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!


Mike
Posted 18 May, 2006 03:20:31 Top
Sergey Grischenko


Add-in Express team


Posts: 7233
 Joined: 2004-07-05
Hi Mike.

Usually this message appears when an add-in performs an incorrect operation while a host application stars. Try to disable a part of the add-in functionality to find the code that raises this issue.
Posted 18 May, 2006 08:52:54 Top
Michael McMahon




Posts: 56
 Joined: 2005-05-03
I have found a resolution for this today which has been tested successfully in our terminal server environment. Basically the go is to remove these registry keys:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\Current Version\Terminal Server\Install\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Excel\Resiliency\

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\Current Version\Terminal Server\Install\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Word\Resiliency\

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\Current Version\Terminal Server\Install\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\Resiliency\

For a description of the issue please visit:

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=69302 and http://citrixfaq.msterminalservices.org/faqs2.cfm?id=484&category=2%2C3&sortby=date

Hope this is useful for someone. :)
Posted 22 May, 2006 01:25:51 Top
Sergey Grischenko


Add-in Express team


Posts: 7233
 Joined: 2004-07-05
Hi Michael.

Thank you for the information.
Posted 22 May, 2006 14:16:18 Top