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WD Stephens Author

Level 1

0 points

Excel 2004 continually crashes OS 10.6

On 9 separate occasions, Excel has crashed my MacBook Pro running 10.6. The crashes have occurred when simply entering data. The screen goes blue for a second and then returns to my desktop with all applications closed. The dialogue box that typical appears after a crash is not triggered. However, in the console under Diagnostic Information --> System Diagnostic Reports. The issue seems to be related to WindowServer process. A portion of the log output is below. Any guidance would be much appreciated.

Process: WindowServer [1920]
Path: /System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/ CoreGraphics.framework/Versions/A/Resources/WindowServer
Identifier: WindowServer
Version: ??? (???)
Code Type: X86-64 (Native)
Parent Process: launchd [1]

Date/Time: 2009-08-31 15:23:07.863 -0700
OS Version: Mac OS X 10.6 (10A432)
Report Version: 6

Exception Type: EXC BADACCESS (SIGSEGV)
Exception Codes: KERN INVALIDADDRESS at 0x00000001918a6860
Crashed Thread: 0 Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread

Thread 0 Crashed: Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread
0 ...ple.CoreServices.CarbonCore 0x00007fff87d732a6 UCKeyTranslate + 464
1 com.apple.CoreGraphics 0x00007fff82c32d79 CGSUniCodeForKeyAndFlags + 161
2 com.apple.CoreGraphics 0x00007fff82ca888b CGXCheckForHotKey + 3184
3 com.apple.CoreGraphics 0x00007fff82b180b9 sPostContinuation + 1808
4 com.apple.CoreGraphics 0x00007fff82b612a2 postAfterTapID + 277
5 com.apple.CoreGraphics 0x00007fff82b17149 CGXFilterEvent + 88
6 com.apple.CoreGraphics 0x00007fff82b175b3 CGXProcessHIDEvent + 164
7 com.apple.CoreGraphics 0x00007fff82b1739c sHIDContinuation + 528
8 com.apple.CoreGraphics 0x00007fff82b1713a CGXFilterEvent + 73
9 com.apple.CoreGraphics 0x00007fff82b16ee5 CGXGetNextEvent + 133
10 com.apple.CoreGraphics 0x00007fff82b16e48 CGXRunOneEventPass + 36
11 com.apple.CoreGraphics 0x00007fff82b19758 eventNotificationHandler + 80
12 com.apple.CoreGraphics 0x00007fff82b196c1 CGXPostPortData + 175
13 com.apple.CoreGraphics 0x00007fff82b194cb CGXRunOneServerPass + 451
14 com.apple.CoreGraphics 0x00007fff82b167e6 CGXRunOneServicesPass + 357
15 com.apple.CoreGraphics 0x00007fff82b1f3ea CGXServerLoop + 139
16 com.apple.CoreGraphics 0x00007fff82aeabd6 CGXGetRootAdminCredentials + 0
17 WindowServer 0x0000000100000f29 main + 9
18 WindowServer 0x0000000100000f18 start + 52

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6)

Posted on Aug 31, 2009 3:37 PM

61 replies

Sep 22, 2009 7:15 PM in response to Davert

I have Retrospect 6 and 8 installed on one machine that has had a couple of crashes.

Bottom line -- it really only crashes when running PPC apps here...

Sep 26, 2009 2:35 AM in response to Stuart Duel

Stuart Duel wrote:
Firstly, I don't think it is fair to blame Apple for a 5 year old third party application misbehaving. Surely it's up to Microsoft to test their own software and make users aware of issues and solutions.

Actually, it's fair to blame Apple, since it's not an Excel crash, but a WindowServer crash (caused, someway, by Excel). As far as I know, Apple is responsible for the WindowServer. And the whole point of having a modern OS like Mac OS X is that a misbehaving application should not bring down the whole system.
I have the problem too, since Snow Leopard, randomly when typing in Excel 2004, and it's very annoying, because it makes you lose everything you were doing in other applications. Now I'll have to remember to save everything in every open app every time I launch Excel.

Some people report having had the problem with 10.5 too. I didn't, but I had sometimes a minor problem: keystrokes not being recognized in Excel 2004. It might me the same problem, related to this UCKeyTranslate routine. Maybe it was buggy all the time, and the transition to 64 bits made the problem worse, something like a misinterpretation of a bad value, a bad cast...

RichBP

Level 1

9 points

Oct 17, 2009 7:47 PM in response to Guillaume Merck

Add me to this long list. I bought a new iMac 3 weeks ago. It came with 10.5 installed and a new install disk for Snow Leopard. I installed it immediately, before installing any of my apps. I also updated to 10.6.1. I did not use the migration assistant, as I've had problems in the past with it. I installed Office 2004 and downloaded the most recent update and installed that. I find that in Excel, any time I hit the "return" or "enter" key, I crash, and find myself at the login page, everything having shut down. Any changes not saved are lost.
Hope this is fixed soon. I also have Office 2008, but don't like it as well, and there seem to be compatibility issues. I'd rather not use it if possible.
I've just gone through my font list, and de-activated a fairly long list of duplicates. Don't know if these are duplicates installed by Office or not. Does anyone know where these come from?

Message was edited by: RichBP

Crul

Level 1

0 points

Oct 21, 2009 11:41 AM in response to crabuback

Getting rid of the bad fonts is the cure. I had two macs with SL on them and they both were doing the same thing when using my new USB barcode scanner. I opened Fontbook and highlighted the fonts that had error marks by them. For good measure I deleted all the fonts out of the user/font folder as well (from both profiles). I'm not a font power user so you may not want to do that yourself. Been using it for about 45 min now and no crashes. I personally think that it was one of the latest office updates that caused this problem. I have 11.5.5. I'd be interested in knowing if anyone with a lower version is having the same problem.

Crul

Level 1

0 points

Oct 21, 2009 11:45 AM in response to Crul

Oops. I didn't just highlight them, I highlighted them and clicked on the box below that said "Disable unused fonts".

Sorry, should have proofread my post.

RichBP

Level 1

9 points

Oct 21, 2009 11:54 AM in response to Crul

Crul, I wonder if you were referring to the yellow triangle next to the font. I found many of these in my font list in Font Book. It meant that there were duplicates of that font. I went through and "resolved duplicates" (in the edit menu) for each of them. I just did this, so don't know if it will have an effect. I find that I'm also having a problem with Word. It just crashed and sent me back to the sign in page. Also, I'm using v.11.5.5 as you are.

JTSuggs

Level 1

0 points

Oct 21, 2009 12:25 PM in response to WD Stephens

This may be a stretch, but I think this may be a CoreGraphics issue related to a setting in System Preferences->Desktop & Screen Saver.

I was having the same thing happen to me for a while and it really bugged me, not to mention the repetitive loss of work made me want to pull my hair out. My MBP would work fine for a week and then "POW" ... login screen with all of my unsaved work sent to the bitosphere.

Nailing it down was difficult because there was no set pattern, and it did not seem to matter if I had Rosetta apps running or not. Although I did see it happen with Excel/Word 2004 and Quicken 2006, it also occurred with only FireFox running or while working in Pixelmator and iPhoto '07. It also occurred if when either using my MBP normally or closed with an external display. CrashReporter.log in Console essentially kept pointing to the same thing: a crash in WindowServer.

Thinking back to recent changes I made, I remembered that a couple weeks earlier I had set System Preferences->Desktop & Screen Saver to rotate my desktop picture every 30 minutes. A friend had told me that this setting caused Quartz Extreme (part of WindowServer) to die after a while and led to iMovie issues with his iMac unless he reboot. When he initially told me this, I was skeptical, but this made me think it might also be the culprit here.

After a series of recurrences over sequential days, some over the same day, I was at my wits end and decided to test it out. First, I removed the rotating desktop setting in System Preferences. Then, for good measure, I did a full reboot. (Note: I decided to reboot in order to completely reset Core Graphics and WindowServer. Simply logging out then in does not do the trick.) My system hummed along for a month with no issues (far longer then it had previously before the issue came up).

Then, for grins, I re-enabled the desktop rotation and again reboot. A little over a week later, recurrence with the same WindowServer CrashReporter log.

Anyway, YMMV of course, but I hope this helps.

Oct 21, 2009 12:50 PM in response to WD Stephens

Same here, both in 10.5 and 10.6... this is a known problem and I am really frustrated with it. My boss is even to the point of going to Windows and wants me to price it out for all of the business dept because of lost time. We have already reverted everyone to 10.4 but this is not a long term solution and spending $15k on upgrading MS Office site license is not the cards... THough running one dept Office 2008 and all the rest in 2004 might have to be the solution...

To say this rubs me the wrong way is an understatement.

Crul

Level 1

0 points

Oct 22, 2009 6:24 AM in response to Sam Wiltzius

Sam, It's a font problem. See my other post.

Rich, Yes, It was those yellow triangles. Once I got rid of the duplicate fonts, have not had the problem. I used Excel for several hours yesterday and it did not happen once. Before, I couldn't go 5 min without it happening.

Oct 22, 2009 7:45 AM in response to Crul

Mine was not caused by duplicate fonts. I resolved duplicate fonts after installing Snow Leopard. Then, after having an Excel crash and reading posts suggesting it could have been caused by duplicate fonts, I checked Font Book. There were no duplicates, no yellow triangles, and Font Book's "Select Duplicate Fonts" command is grayed out (as it always is immediately after resolving duplicate fonts).

Oct 22, 2009 7:24 PM in response to Patrick Houlihan

Same problem here. I have deleted all "yellow triangle" fonts and resolved all duplicate fonts. Still in Excel 2004 I can simply be entering data into a cell and randomly the input freezes, the screen goes blue and Snow Leopard reappears with all my data gone!

Crul

Level 1

0 points

Oct 23, 2009 6:18 AM in response to MRothmayer

I guess one last thing you could try that I failed to mention that I did, was I had two profiles on my mac mini. As you know, each profile has a font folder as well as there is a font folder under /Library
What I did was deleted all the user fonts, and checked fontbook under the other profile too. I had two computers with this happening and removing fonts worked for me. Good Luck.

Oct 23, 2009 6:37 AM in response to Crul

After clean installing snow leopard and having nothing else but office 2004 (clean install) on 6 computers, 4 of them have this excel logout issue. They happen a lot, about 8 to 10 times in a day. the log out issue seems to only happen with Excel 2004 in our case. I have removed the fonts dup issue and that help i think in reducing the amount of logout crashes.
This issue is happen on 3 Macbook pro alubook 25" and the other machine is Macbook Pro 13.3. So the computer model doesn't seem to matter. All version of office are updated to the latest version available.
The crash log does say its the windows server crash. I have tried everything to resolve this issue but nothing seems to work. Im soon going to be dodging flying laptops from my users if its not solved, my issue is that i cant downgrade them because of time scales so im a bit stuck. Please help.

Crul

Level 1

0 points

Oct 23, 2009 9:20 AM in response to Mickael Lesoeur-Behn

Mickael. One more thing you might try is reinstall Office 2004 but DONT install the 11.5.5 update. and see if it still happens. Something tells me that this all started with one of the most recent updates. I find it odd that you can only download the 11.5 update from Microsoft. Perhaps you can find an earlier one than 11.5.
And incrementally go from there. I ALWAYS turn off automatic updates from Microsoft. I can name several times where their update caused problems.

Oct 23, 2009 10:27 AM in response to Crul

Hi Crul,

Ill try that and see if it helps. I know that any version of Office before the 11.52 gives a framework error. Lucky i keep a copy of all updates to all my apps, so i have the previous versions. I'll give it a try and let you know.
The other thing i have noticed but haven't been able to test out because of the randomness of it is removed second screen to the MacBook Pros. I run SL on my Unibody Pro and i have never had the logout issue, I never have a second screen connect to my Unibody. Also another interesting note is that a few of the leopard installs caused the keystroke pause issue in excel 2004 as well. So i cant help but think that these two issue in Leopard and SL are the same issue but just react differently to them on each OSX.
Im starting to believe it is a Microsoft issue with there software not being updated to leopard or SL.

Now that the day is over for my users the reports i got back from them is only 2 logouts in excel compared to the 20 per user yesterday. So the doubling fonts issue does help just doesn't fully solve it.

Excel 2004 continually crashes OS 10.6