We recently had a Support Ticket raised under the SharePoint banner that reported when some users hovered over a Contact Card in SharePoint, it caused Internet Explorer to “stop working”:
- Immediately, I questioned the possibility of SharePoint being the root cause as it wasn’t affecting every user, unless they logged onto the same device. The issue was easily replicated and consistent in behaviour. In my experience, this pattern points to a problem with the device, browser or add-ons. Moreover, the Application Event Log had a “faulting application” entry (see bottom of this post). The environment in question was IE-only so I figured disabling the add-ons was the next logical step. From IE, click “Tools > Manage Add-ons” and find “NameCtrl Class” from the list. Highlight the row and then click Disable.
- Although IE no longer displays a user’s Lync presence, it was a successful workaround as IE no longer crashed.
- Let’s have a closer look at that add-on then. I was still sure SharePoint wasn’t at fault but as anyone who has worked with SharePoint in anger will tell you; never rule it out 🙂 From the Manage Add-ons dialog, select the same row we just disabled in the previous step and right-click it. Select “More Information” from the context menu. We can see from the add-on Properties that it is part of the Office installation and is using ActiveX. Phew! Still happy it’s not a SharePoint issue.
- I was lucky enough to have a sandbox machine that was able to replicate the problem so I dived right in and carried out a Repair installation of Office. For the sake of brevity, I will not cover the steps required but basically you can do it through “Control Panel > Programs and Features”. There is also a post here detailing some further reading for a similar problem http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w8itprogeneral/thread/64110778-436c-4134-8979-a032b666f194
- Once Office had been repaired, I enabled the add-ons and repeated the process. Voila, the presence was showing an no crashing of IE!
Event Log except for the benefit of Search engines:
Log Name: Application Source: Application Error Date: 21/02/2013 14:40:41 Event ID: 1000 Task Category: (100) Level: Error Keywords: Classic User: N/A Computer: [COMPUTERNAME].Risual.com Description: Faulting application name: IEXPLORE.EXE, version: 10.0.9200.16482, time stamp: 0x50cfc9bf Faulting module name: OLEAUT32.dll, version: 6.2.9200.16384, time stamp: 0x50108a69 Exception code: 0xc0000005 Fault offset: 0x00005ec2 Faulting process id: 0x1f64 Faulting application start time: 0x01ce10414a4761f7 Faulting application path: C:Program Files (x86)Internet ExplorerIEXPLORE.EXE Faulting module path: C:windowsSYSTEM32OLEAUT32.dll Report Id: a9f19502-7c34-11e2-beab-c485082fa3c2 Faulting package full name: Faulting package-relative application ID: Event Xml: <Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event"> <System> <Provider Name="Application Error" /> <EventID Qualifiers="0">1000</EventID> <Level>2</Level> <Task>100</Task> <Keywords>0x80000000000000</Keywords> <TimeCreated SystemTime="2013-02-21T14:40:41.000000000Z" /> <EventRecordID>20471</EventRecordID> <Channel>Application</Channel> <Computer>[COMPUTERNAME].Risual.com</Computer> <Security /> </System> <EventData> <Data>IEXPLORE.EXE</Data> <Data>10.0.9200.16482</Data> <Data>50cfc9bf</Data> <Data>OLEAUT32.dll</Data> <Data>6.2.9200.16384</Data> <Data>50108a69</Data> <Data>c0000005</Data> <Data>00005ec2</Data> <Data>1f64</Data> <Data>01ce10414a4761f7</Data> <Data>C:Program Files (x86)Internet ExplorerIEXPLORE.EXE</Data> <Data>C:windowsSYSTEM32OLEAUT32.dll</Data> <Data>a9f19502-7c34-11e2-beab-c485082fa3c2</Data> <Data> </Data> <Data> </Data> </EventData> </Event>
