11 ms·

Microsoft Outlook is crashing worldwide with 0xc0000005 errors

135 points by TrealTwan 6y ago

miles 6y ago
You can roll back to the previous version to restore access[1]: "%Programfiles%\Common Files\microsoft shared\ClickToRun\officec2rclient.exe" /update user updatetoversion=16.0.12827.20470 [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/hrq0mn/outlook_immediately_crashing_on_open_after/ https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/hrq0mn/outlook_im...
- teh_klev 6y ago
  The article does actually point this out near the end.
  - miles 6y ago
    The article was edited to add the directions well after my comment.
    - teh_klev 6y ago
      My apologies.
      - miles 6y ago
        No worries at all - they didn't even mention that the article had been amended, so most folks finding this HN thread now will likely feel just as you did. I appreciate your comment, as it alerted me to the fact that there is now an all-in-one page with a good overview of the issue and workarounds that I can share with others.
        dudus 6y ago
        It was amended probably because of the comment here.
- Shivetya 6y ago
  Well for many end users at large companies they won't have the authority to do so and will have to wait for their support group to do so, assuming they let the update through. Some have a victim pool, er, test pool, to help protect from such as this
gfody 6y ago
if you don't want to rollback to the previous version you can also use safe mode (hold ctrl when you launch outlook)
- nubb 6y ago
  Safe mode still crashes for my users.
hs86 6y ago
What is going on with Outlook for Windows? For years, it froze its entire UI whenever there was some network lag on the IMAP server, and the recent improvements for Outlook strangely focus only on their Mac, web, and mobile versions. Does the Windows version still have a future? It seems to be stuck in some maintenance limbo.
- sebazzz 6y ago
  I think it is probably a very large program but does have some legacy cruft they probably can't fix easily. Either because backwards compatibility for COM or due to that if you rewrite something to be async the callers also need to be async and callee need to be non-blocking[0]. However, Outlook is very much actively developed and myself being a Premium user am receiving new features now and then, like UI refreshes etc. [0] http://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2015/02/01/what-color-is-your-function/ http://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2015/02/01/what-color-is-y...
- cosmie 6y ago
  If you look at the release notes[1], Outlook for Windows is getting a lot of love too. The majority of updates are performance and bug fixes, but the UI issue you mentioned highlights the need for this type of TLC in the Windows client. That said, the frequency you receive these will be pretty dependent on which release cycle your install is set up for, as it can range from monthly to semi-annually. The Mac, web, and mobile versions are getting a whole lot of feature releases in comparison to the Windows client, but virtually all of them are intended to bring those other clients to feature parity with the Windows client. I've interpreted this as more of Microsoft treating these alternate platforms as first-class citizens finally, rather than as neglect of the Windows clients. This also isn't limited to just the Outlook client - it's a trend across the entire Office suite. For example, Power Query[2] is a really neat and powerful ETL system hiding within Excel (as well as used in PowerBI, and originating in SQL Server Analysis Services). It's been available for years in Excel for Windows, but only recently became usable on Excel for Mac thanks to a major refactor[3] to port it to .NET Core and strip out Windows dependencies. Eventually this will reach feature parity with and replace the legacy Power Query code in the Windows Excel client, then all net new development will be cross-platform and available on both clients simultaneously. All things considered, I view the resource allocation across the platforms as a positive. Presuming the feature development happening for the non-Windows clients are as similarly cross-platform as the Power Query effort, it'll eventually lead to cleaned up Windows clients with decades of legacy cruft refactored out, feature parity and consistency across platforms, and substantially greater velocity as those resources currently split between platforms eventually consolidate and focus on a unified, cross-platform, and cleaned up codebase. And if the refactors continue to prioritize .NET Core, it also bodes well for an official Linux client eventually. [1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/officeupdates/semi-annual-enterprise-channel https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/officeupdates/semi-annual-e... [2] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-query/power-query-what-is-power-query https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-query/power-query-wha... [3] https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/using-net-core-to-provide-power-query-for-excel-on-mac/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/using-net-core-to-prov...
DudeInBasement 6y ago
Welcome to windowsME
Arnavion 6y ago
(0xC000005 == STATUS_ACCESS_VIOLATION, accessing a memory address that couldn't be accessed, ie a segfault.)
- sebazzz 6y ago
  I wonder if this is an attack vector. On one hand it isn't because usually the HTTP traffic of Exchange is encrypted, on the other hand it is a crash triggered by a remote condition.
fortran77 6y ago
Yup! I just updated Windows and got a crash. Relaunched it and it was ok Faulting application name: OUTLOOK.EXE, version: 16.0.13001.20266, time stamp: 0x5ef2a169 Faulting module name: mso98win32client.dll, version: 0.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x5ef2771f Exception code: 0xc0000005 Fault offset: 0x00000000000beef2 Faulting process id: 0x3be0 Faulting application start time: 0x01d65ad25f628bf7 Faulting application path: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\root\Office16\OUTLOOK.EXE Faulting module path: C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Office16\mso98win32client.dll It's also very nice how easy it is to roll back one program on Windows! officec2rclient.exe /update user updatetoversion=16.0.12827.20470
- Shorel 6y ago
  So that's why I have not been affected. I only shutdown "my" work laptop on weekends.
  - WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
    Rebooting didn't work for us. Rollback did tho.
- jacob019 6y ago
  Blame it on beef
- monroeta 6y ago
  That worked perfect for me also. "%Programfiles%\Common Files\microsoft shared\ClickToRun\officec2rclient.exe" /update user updatetoversion=16.0.12827.20470 After 5 hours of failed attempts and many failed system restore points the updatetoversion link above worked on multiple pcs
venki80 6y ago
Yikes. Use Outlook Web Access (OWA)!!
stkai 6y ago
If you're on Office 365, the Outlook web client is great (https://outlook.office.com https://outlook.office.com). In fact, I haven't used the full client since 2015, except for rare cases. Or, you can enjoy the quiet while email is down :)
- neogodless 6y ago
  ... apparently you have to know that your (personal) Office 365 account is no good here? I thought maybe Microsoft cleaned up their confusing mess of logins a few years back. Perhaps not! > You can't sign in here with a personal account. Use your work or school account instead. Of course it works if you instead go to https://www.outlook.com/ https://www.outlook.com/
- csydas 6y ago
  Would have to disagree. With any ad/tracking protection or non-chromium based browsers, the web client is not very good. For MacOS, it constantly requires reloads in order to get different folders, emails, or other basic functionality (Calendar, Categories, etc) to work correctly. The text editor is completely random in what it decides to do with formatting, links automatically have a gigantic preview link inserted into the text body, the UI is very much so different than the Outlook Client UI and does not port over any of the Outlook Client items (this is more a design decision in general from Microsoft on what is client side vs what is server side...) The Web Client in its current form is functional, in that I can write and receive emails, but the experience is greatly diminished. Don't mistake me for liking the Outlook client (I am a very modest email user, no more than 400 some per day + a Tetris-style calendar), but this load crashes the client on a daily basis, on start up it takes a good 30 seconds before the client becomes responsive (with multiple local profile rebuilds), and sometimes just crashing randomly when reading certain HTML formatted emails. Outlook is an exercise in frustration in general that unfortunately my entire company has built its foundation upon. The core ideas are great, but the execution on all fronts is awful. I'm actually almost disappointed when I open the mobile app and it __hasn't completely changed some UI/UX element__ as daily changes are the norm for me. (all this being said, I'm shocked that Gmail somehow took Outlooks unusualness as a challenge and designed a worse UI/UX experience...)
marricks 6y ago
I wonder if large companies get more of a pass with outages then small ones? Bias towards authority in a way. If a service has a big enough base an outage could almost seem like a pass for everyone. “Oo couldn’t do that this morning GITHUB was down.” Whereas if my small GitLab server was down bosses could be “well why aren’t we on GitHub like everyone else, it’s up now?” When google calendar was down a bit ago I tried looking at random people responses on twitter and many were “whew I get out of some meetings!” Perhaps there is some accountability for large scale outages like these but it really feels like consensus is often “shit happens” which is totally reasonable just seems like it could hurt big companies a lot less.
- SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
  I think with a smaller product you're trying to fight for market share and retaining a client - Microsoft is so large and with so much momentum and dug so deeply into their customers that this sort of thing doesn't cause them to want to find something else. If it hurts to change, it's easy to excuse something like this.
- marricks 6y ago
  I think an interesting counterpoint to my observation is Firefox claimed they lost a lot of users because Google services just broke in odd ways only on Firefox so users moved to Chrome.[1] My counter to that would be, even though Firefox was and is a big company it's easy to change. A lot of services like Outlook, Chrome, or Gmail or just downright colossal at this point. Changing from Gmail isn't easy because of all the other services and logins associated with it. Not to mention, Gsuite, GitHub, Outlook, and such are all very corporate. Higher ups make the decision as to when to use these often enough, so you can't just say "this has kind of failed us a couple times lets try something else". So all in all, I still stand by my point, entrenched big companies probably get more of a pass. [1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/former-mozilla-exec-google-has-sabotaged-firefox-for-years/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/former-mozilla-exec-google-has...
  - pmontra 6y ago
    > Changing from Gmail isn't easy because of all the other services and logins associated with it. You can keep the Gmail account and start using a new one somewhere else. You start registering to new services with your new account and gradually migrate old services to it if they let you. You end up with gmail for social logins (which hopefully you can migrate too) and little else. I do have a Gmail account. I use it to login in Google when I work for a customer which use the Google Cloud, when I have to upload videos to YouTube (I logout after that) and for Google Play.
bshep 6y ago
For now Outlook for Mac seems unaffected
sowellecho 6y ago
The scrutiny of the actual value added by middle managers during the remote work era gets a minor respite. Boss: "Why didn't you get any work done?" Middle manager: "The dog (Microsoft Outlook) ate my homework (email)"
cjhanks 6y ago
Somewhere there is a programmer that tried to fix a bug in 10+ year old legacy code (mso98win32client.dll) who has learned the bugs of legacy are features of today.
ocdtrekkie 6y ago
It's worth noting that this appears solely to be a failure with Office 365/Click-to-Run-based installations. If you buy your software instead of subscribing to it, and service Office with traditional Windows Update mechanisms... everything is fine today. This is what happens when you rip out well-tested IT infrastructure that has a reasonable update distribution process and entrust the cloud to update your software for you.
- mysterydip 6y ago
  But the salesguy said these things wouldn't happen!
  - njsubedi 6y ago
    More like if anything like this happens we'll refund you.
    - indigo945 6y ago
      Haha what? No, never. This just doesn't happen in the software world. Besides, Microsoft has some terrible SLAs. Even with Azure it is almost impossible to get a refund for outages that are entirely Microsoft's fault.
      - sushshshsh 6y ago
        Refund? What's a refund? The customer is going to add more funds to their account, right? --some CEO somewhere
- techntoke 6y ago
  Microsoft switched to no longer providing updated ISOs for Office 2019 and actively pushes Office 365. Plus their package management and update tools for enterprises are riddled with their own issues that makes managing hotfixes and updates a major PIA.
- WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
joaogoncalv_es 6y ago
I had an user with Office 2016 who just had this problem. I didn’t found this article in time and I solved it with a clean installation of Office. (Safe mode did not work)
- techntoke 6y ago
  Ask Microsoft to reimburse you for your time.
cwkoss 6y ago
I am constantly amazed at the number of bugs and seemingly obvious UI issues pervasive throughout microsoft products. It feels like their product philosophy is "jack of all trades, master of none" - they try to support so many uses cases that there isn't a cohesive best practice anywhere.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
  I feel like this has only really been the case since about 2015, so instead of ascribing it to a "jack of all trades" philosophy I believe it can be more readily explained by a "lets hire a bunch of webdevs to work on our desktop OS" philosophy.
  - tjalfi 6y ago
    They laid off thousands of testers in 2014[0]. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that quality plummeted afterwards. [0] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/08/how-microsoft-dragged-its-development-practices-into-the-21st-century/4/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/08/how-m...
    - sabarn01 6y ago
      Most were moved to dev. The difference is Dev are responsible for writing tests now which was not true prior.
jyrkesh 6y ago
I don't know if the article mentions this because (ironically) Bleeping Computer is now down, but you may be able to fix this by holding Ctrl while opening Outlook in order to start it in Safe Mode. Whenever I'm in a broken state, I do this, load it up fully, close it again, and start it normally. Then things usually work okay. I had to do that this morning on my work machine, not sure if it was related to this issue.
- mastazi 6y ago
  The article mentions this, but it says that apparently, with this specific bug, you also Have to hold Ctrl every subsequent time you re-open Outlook - it’s not a one-off fix. They suggest going back to the previous release as an alternative.
aaomidi 6y ago
This a really bad outage because it happened to my partner and there is nothing obvious about what went wrong. It just...closes.
- WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
  > there is nothing obvious about what went wrong. It just...closes. Yeah, that's disconcerting from a support standpoint. Fortunately, I was able to remotely load their event logs and get the status code. DDG pointed right to the above article.
kerng 6y ago
I always thought I really disliked Outlook ( because of so many issues) until I worked for this well known startup and started using Gmail. Man, how I miss all the Outlook issues... at least it was good for reading/writing email. Disliking something can be quite relative I guess...
- sabarn01 6y ago
  I like gmail fine for personal email. I don't see how anyone gets work done with it.
- signal11 6y ago
  What's wrong with it? Just curious, I use Outlook for work and my main pet peeve is that i) local search isn't great and ii) in general, the application UI is very 'delicate' -- e.g., I have mail rules that move mailing lists to a folder. I browse through them from time to time but housekeeping those is a nightmare-- Outlook consistently freezes while deleting larger numbers of email.
imperialdrive 6y ago
Wild - I experienced this first thing in the morning. I'm running Windows 20H2 (19042.388) and Office Beta (v2008, b13102.20002) and assumed it was from the recent updates. Online repair didn't work, full repair didn't either, but a complete uninstall/reboot/reinstall worked and preserved my profile just fine (I thought it was perhaps the profile too but guess not) - Wild!
wolfi1 6y ago
I'm relieved it's not only me. For the time being I resort to safe mode
16bytes 6y ago
I still don't understand why Microsoft doesn't print human readable error code instead of just "0xc0000005". To figure out what the actual message is, you first have to figure out if you are seeing a HRESULT or a NTSTATUS[1]. In this case the leading 0xC is an invalid HRESULT, so it's for sure an NTSTATUS. Then you just look up the code in the bottom two bytes [2]. In this case it's just error code 5: "STATUS_ACCESS_VIOLATION", which is a memory access error, which typically means it's a bug where the program accidentally is trying to read outside of its memory space. So, for sure an application error and not something that the user did or some sort of system issue. There are also "facility" codes which can give you more information what where the issue is happening, but this code is just using the default. I suppose this is better than when they would print the decimal value instead of the hex. "WTF is error code 3221225477?" [1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecs/windows_protocols/ms-erref/87fba13e-bf06-450e-83b1-9241dc81e781 https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecs/windows_protocols... [2] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecs/windows_protocols/ms-erref/596a1078-e883-4972-9bbc-49e60bebca55 https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecs/windows_protocols...
- boramalper 6y ago
  I really enjoyed reading this, thanks! > In this case it's just error code 5: "STATUS_ACCESS_VIOLATION", which is a memory access error, which typically means it's a bug where the program accidentally is trying to read outside of its memory space. What would be a (more) user-friendly error message for this though, given the quite technical nature of the error?
  - acqq 6y ago
    In fact the "status access violation" message would be much more confusing for the "normal" non-programmer person. I believe the actual error would be "access violation", status is only the prefix. But I don't think that text would help normal users more. As in: "Who is that General Protection, what has he done to my computer and why is that his fault"? "General Protection Fault" were the words actually presented to the "normal" users before. It surely didn't help them to read that.
EvanAnderson 6y ago
This is probably a good time to ask: Are any of you receiving your checks from Microsoft for all the beta (and, apparently alpha) testing that you're doing? Mine aren't showing up. I'm not sure who to contact about it. /s In the calls that I've gotten my tiny little Customer base has had something like 25 people "down" today. At least ActiveSync on phones and OWA were still working. I know some people were miffed that full-blown Outlook was unusable because it's a major part of their workflow. How did this get past QA? It's simply mind-blowing...
- ldiracdelta 6y ago
  I just pay it forward. I've written so many bugs.
mathogre 6y ago
I had the problem with Outlook; I have to use it for work. While waiting for the help desk to get back to me on Outlook crashing, I used "quick repair" and it cleaned up the problem. https://redmondmag.com/articles/2019/05/10/repairing-office-365.aspx https://redmondmag.com/articles/2019/05/10/repairing-office-...
WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
Got a call on this a few hours ago. Found the above article & the rollback set us right for now.
ed_elliott_asc 6y ago
With OWA there is no need to use the outlook client anymore
monroeta 6y ago
The link to reinstall old update worked!
monroeta 6y ago
After 5 hours of uninstalling and failed windows system restore points, and a quick 24 google search worked! The below link mentioned really fixed the issue on multiple pcs. Thank you!!!! "%Programfiles%\Common Files\microsoft shared\ClickToRun\officec2rclient.exe" /update user updatetoversion=16.0.12827.20470

135 points by TrealTwan 6y ago

You can roll back to the previous version to restore access[1]: "%Programfiles%\Common Files\microsoft shared\ClickToRun\officec2rclient.exe" /update user updatetoversion=16.0.12827.20470 [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/hrq0mn/outlook_immediately_crashing_on_open_after/ https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/hrq0mn/outlook_im...

teh_klev 6y ago
The article does actually point this out near the end.
- miles 6y ago
  The article was edited to add the directions well after my comment.
  - teh_klev 6y ago
    My apologies.
    - miles 6y ago
      No worries at all - they didn't even mention that the article had been amended, so most folks finding this HN thread now will likely feel just as you did. I appreciate your comment, as it alerted me to the fact that there is now an all-in-one page with a good overview of the issue and workarounds that I can share with others.
      - dudus 6y ago
        It was amended probably because of the comment here.
Shivetya 6y ago
Well for many end users at large companies they won't have the authority to do so and will have to wait for their support group to do so, assuming they let the update through. Some have a victim pool, er, test pool, to help protect from such as this

gfody 6y ago

if you don't want to rollback to the previous version you can also use safe mode (hold ctrl when you launch outlook)

nubb 6y ago
Safe mode still crashes for my users.

hs86 6y ago

What is going on with Outlook for Windows? For years, it froze its entire UI whenever there was some network lag on the IMAP server, and the recent improvements for Outlook strangely focus only on their Mac, web, and mobile versions. Does the Windows version still have a future? It seems to be stuck in some maintenance limbo.

sebazzz 6y ago
I think it is probably a very large program but does have some legacy cruft they probably can't fix easily. Either because backwards compatibility for COM or due to that if you rewrite something to be async the callers also need to be async and callee need to be non-blocking[0]. However, Outlook is very much actively developed and myself being a Premium user am receiving new features now and then, like UI refreshes etc. [0] http://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2015/02/01/what-color-is-your-function/ http://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2015/02/01/what-color-is-y...
cosmie 6y ago
If you look at the release notes[1], Outlook for Windows is getting a lot of love too. The majority of updates are performance and bug fixes, but the UI issue you mentioned highlights the need for this type of TLC in the Windows client. That said, the frequency you receive these will be pretty dependent on which release cycle your install is set up for, as it can range from monthly to semi-annually. The Mac, web, and mobile versions are getting a whole lot of feature releases in comparison to the Windows client, but virtually all of them are intended to bring those other clients to feature parity with the Windows client. I've interpreted this as more of Microsoft treating these alternate platforms as first-class citizens finally, rather than as neglect of the Windows clients. This also isn't limited to just the Outlook client - it's a trend across the entire Office suite. For example, Power Query[2] is a really neat and powerful ETL system hiding within Excel (as well as used in PowerBI, and originating in SQL Server Analysis Services). It's been available for years in Excel for Windows, but only recently became usable on Excel for Mac thanks to a major refactor[3] to port it to .NET Core and strip out Windows dependencies. Eventually this will reach feature parity with and replace the legacy Power Query code in the Windows Excel client, then all net new development will be cross-platform and available on both clients simultaneously. All things considered, I view the resource allocation across the platforms as a positive. Presuming the feature development happening for the non-Windows clients are as similarly cross-platform as the Power Query effort, it'll eventually lead to cleaned up Windows clients with decades of legacy cruft refactored out, feature parity and consistency across platforms, and substantially greater velocity as those resources currently split between platforms eventually consolidate and focus on a unified, cross-platform, and cleaned up codebase. And if the refactors continue to prioritize .NET Core, it also bodes well for an official Linux client eventually. [1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/officeupdates/semi-annual-enterprise-channel https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/officeupdates/semi-annual-e... [2] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-query/power-query-what-is-power-query https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-query/power-query-wha... [3] https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/using-net-core-to-provide-power-query-for-excel-on-mac/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/using-net-core-to-prov...

DudeInBasement 6y ago

Welcome to windowsME

Arnavion 6y ago

(0xC000005 == STATUS_ACCESS_VIOLATION, accessing a memory address that couldn't be accessed, ie a segfault.)

sebazzz 6y ago
I wonder if this is an attack vector. On one hand it isn't because usually the HTTP traffic of Exchange is encrypted, on the other hand it is a crash triggered by a remote condition.

fortran77 6y ago

Yup! I just updated Windows and got a crash. Relaunched it and it was ok Faulting application name: OUTLOOK.EXE, version: 16.0.13001.20266, time stamp: 0x5ef2a169 Faulting module name: mso98win32client.dll, version: 0.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x5ef2771f Exception code: 0xc0000005 Fault offset: 0x00000000000beef2 Faulting process id: 0x3be0 Faulting application start time: 0x01d65ad25f628bf7 Faulting application path: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\root\Office16\OUTLOOK.EXE Faulting module path: C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Office16\mso98win32client.dll It's also very nice how easy it is to roll back one program on Windows! officec2rclient.exe /update user updatetoversion=16.0.12827.20470

Shorel 6y ago
So that's why I have not been affected. I only shutdown "my" work laptop on weekends.
- WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
  Rebooting didn't work for us. Rollback did tho.
jacob019 6y ago
Blame it on beef
monroeta 6y ago
That worked perfect for me also. "%Programfiles%\Common Files\microsoft shared\ClickToRun\officec2rclient.exe" /update user updatetoversion=16.0.12827.20470 After 5 hours of failed attempts and many failed system restore points the updatetoversion link above worked on multiple pcs

venki80 6y ago

Yikes. Use Outlook Web Access (OWA)!!

stkai 6y ago

If you're on Office 365, the Outlook web client is great (https://outlook.office.com https://outlook.office.com). In fact, I haven't used the full client since 2015, except for rare cases. Or, you can enjoy the quiet while email is down :)

neogodless 6y ago
... apparently you have to know that your (personal) Office 365 account is no good here? I thought maybe Microsoft cleaned up their confusing mess of logins a few years back. Perhaps not! > You can't sign in here with a personal account. Use your work or school account instead. Of course it works if you instead go to https://www.outlook.com/ https://www.outlook.com/
csydas 6y ago
Would have to disagree. With any ad/tracking protection or non-chromium based browsers, the web client is not very good. For MacOS, it constantly requires reloads in order to get different folders, emails, or other basic functionality (Calendar, Categories, etc) to work correctly. The text editor is completely random in what it decides to do with formatting, links automatically have a gigantic preview link inserted into the text body, the UI is very much so different than the Outlook Client UI and does not port over any of the Outlook Client items (this is more a design decision in general from Microsoft on what is client side vs what is server side...) The Web Client in its current form is functional, in that I can write and receive emails, but the experience is greatly diminished. Don't mistake me for liking the Outlook client (I am a very modest email user, no more than 400 some per day + a Tetris-style calendar), but this load crashes the client on a daily basis, on start up it takes a good 30 seconds before the client becomes responsive (with multiple local profile rebuilds), and sometimes just crashing randomly when reading certain HTML formatted emails. Outlook is an exercise in frustration in general that unfortunately my entire company has built its foundation upon. The core ideas are great, but the execution on all fronts is awful. I'm actually almost disappointed when I open the mobile app and it __hasn't completely changed some UI/UX element__ as daily changes are the norm for me. (all this being said, I'm shocked that Gmail somehow took Outlooks unusualness as a challenge and designed a worse UI/UX experience...)

marricks 6y ago

I wonder if large companies get more of a pass with outages then small ones? Bias towards authority in a way. If a service has a big enough base an outage could almost seem like a pass for everyone. “Oo couldn’t do that this morning GITHUB was down.” Whereas if my small GitLab server was down bosses could be “well why aren’t we on GitHub like everyone else, it’s up now?” When google calendar was down a bit ago I tried looking at random people responses on twitter and many were “whew I get out of some meetings!” Perhaps there is some accountability for large scale outages like these but it really feels like consensus is often “shit happens” which is totally reasonable just seems like it could hurt big companies a lot less.

SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
I think with a smaller product you're trying to fight for market share and retaining a client - Microsoft is so large and with so much momentum and dug so deeply into their customers that this sort of thing doesn't cause them to want to find something else. If it hurts to change, it's easy to excuse something like this.
marricks 6y ago
I think an interesting counterpoint to my observation is Firefox claimed they lost a lot of users because Google services just broke in odd ways only on Firefox so users moved to Chrome.[1] My counter to that would be, even though Firefox was and is a big company it's easy to change. A lot of services like Outlook, Chrome, or Gmail or just downright colossal at this point. Changing from Gmail isn't easy because of all the other services and logins associated with it. Not to mention, Gsuite, GitHub, Outlook, and such are all very corporate. Higher ups make the decision as to when to use these often enough, so you can't just say "this has kind of failed us a couple times lets try something else". So all in all, I still stand by my point, entrenched big companies probably get more of a pass. [1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/former-mozilla-exec-google-has-sabotaged-firefox-for-years/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/former-mozilla-exec-google-has...
- pmontra 6y ago
  > Changing from Gmail isn't easy because of all the other services and logins associated with it. You can keep the Gmail account and start using a new one somewhere else. You start registering to new services with your new account and gradually migrate old services to it if they let you. You end up with gmail for social logins (which hopefully you can migrate too) and little else. I do have a Gmail account. I use it to login in Google when I work for a customer which use the Google Cloud, when I have to upload videos to YouTube (I logout after that) and for Google Play.

bshep 6y ago

For now Outlook for Mac seems unaffected

sowellecho 6y ago

The scrutiny of the actual value added by middle managers during the remote work era gets a minor respite. Boss: "Why didn't you get any work done?" Middle manager: "The dog (Microsoft Outlook) ate my homework (email)"

cjhanks 6y ago

Somewhere there is a programmer that tried to fix a bug in 10+ year old legacy code (mso98win32client.dll) who has learned the bugs of legacy are features of today.

ocdtrekkie 6y ago

It's worth noting that this appears solely to be a failure with Office 365/Click-to-Run-based installations. If you buy your software instead of subscribing to it, and service Office with traditional Windows Update mechanisms... everything is fine today. This is what happens when you rip out well-tested IT infrastructure that has a reasonable update distribution process and entrust the cloud to update your software for you.

mysterydip 6y ago
But the salesguy said these things wouldn't happen!
- njsubedi 6y ago
  More like if anything like this happens we'll refund you.
  - indigo945 6y ago
    Haha what? No, never. This just doesn't happen in the software world. Besides, Microsoft has some terrible SLAs. Even with Azure it is almost impossible to get a refund for outages that are entirely Microsoft's fault.
    - sushshshsh 6y ago
      Refund? What's a refund? The customer is going to add more funds to their account, right? --some CEO somewhere
techntoke 6y ago
Microsoft switched to no longer providing updated ISOs for Office 2019 and actively pushes Office 365. Plus their package management and update tools for enterprises are riddled with their own issues that makes managing hotfixes and updates a major PIA.
WarOnPrivacy 6y ago

joaogoncalv_es 6y ago

I had an user with Office 2016 who just had this problem. I didn’t found this article in time and I solved it with a clean installation of Office. (Safe mode did not work)

techntoke 6y ago
Ask Microsoft to reimburse you for your time.

cwkoss 6y ago

I am constantly amazed at the number of bugs and seemingly obvious UI issues pervasive throughout microsoft products. It feels like their product philosophy is "jack of all trades, master of none" - they try to support so many uses cases that there isn't a cohesive best practice anywhere.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
I feel like this has only really been the case since about 2015, so instead of ascribing it to a "jack of all trades" philosophy I believe it can be more readily explained by a "lets hire a bunch of webdevs to work on our desktop OS" philosophy.
- tjalfi 6y ago
  They laid off thousands of testers in 2014[0]. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that quality plummeted afterwards. [0] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/08/how-microsoft-dragged-its-development-practices-into-the-21st-century/4/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/08/how-m...
  - sabarn01 6y ago
    Most were moved to dev. The difference is Dev are responsible for writing tests now which was not true prior.

jyrkesh 6y ago

I don't know if the article mentions this because (ironically) Bleeping Computer is now down, but you may be able to fix this by holding Ctrl while opening Outlook in order to start it in Safe Mode. Whenever I'm in a broken state, I do this, load it up fully, close it again, and start it normally. Then things usually work okay. I had to do that this morning on my work machine, not sure if it was related to this issue.

mastazi 6y ago
The article mentions this, but it says that apparently, with this specific bug, you also Have to hold Ctrl every subsequent time you re-open Outlook - it’s not a one-off fix. They suggest going back to the previous release as an alternative.

aaomidi 6y ago

This a really bad outage because it happened to my partner and there is nothing obvious about what went wrong. It just...closes.

WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
> there is nothing obvious about what went wrong. It just...closes. Yeah, that's disconcerting from a support standpoint. Fortunately, I was able to remotely load their event logs and get the status code. DDG pointed right to the above article.

kerng 6y ago

I always thought I really disliked Outlook ( because of so many issues) until I worked for this well known startup and started using Gmail. Man, how I miss all the Outlook issues... at least it was good for reading/writing email. Disliking something can be quite relative I guess...

sabarn01 6y ago
I like gmail fine for personal email. I don't see how anyone gets work done with it.
signal11 6y ago
What's wrong with it? Just curious, I use Outlook for work and my main pet peeve is that i) local search isn't great and ii) in general, the application UI is very 'delicate' -- e.g., I have mail rules that move mailing lists to a folder. I browse through them from time to time but housekeeping those is a nightmare-- Outlook consistently freezes while deleting larger numbers of email.

imperialdrive 6y ago

Wild - I experienced this first thing in the morning. I'm running Windows 20H2 (19042.388) and Office Beta (v2008, b13102.20002) and assumed it was from the recent updates. Online repair didn't work, full repair didn't either, but a complete uninstall/reboot/reinstall worked and preserved my profile just fine (I thought it was perhaps the profile too but guess not) - Wild!

wolfi1 6y ago

I'm relieved it's not only me. For the time being I resort to safe mode

16bytes 6y ago

I still don't understand why Microsoft doesn't print human readable error code instead of just "0xc0000005". To figure out what the actual message is, you first have to figure out if you are seeing a HRESULT or a NTSTATUS[1]. In this case the leading 0xC is an invalid HRESULT, so it's for sure an NTSTATUS. Then you just look up the code in the bottom two bytes [2]. In this case it's just error code 5: "STATUS_ACCESS_VIOLATION", which is a memory access error, which typically means it's a bug where the program accidentally is trying to read outside of its memory space. So, for sure an application error and not something that the user did or some sort of system issue. There are also "facility" codes which can give you more information what where the issue is happening, but this code is just using the default. I suppose this is better than when they would print the decimal value instead of the hex. "WTF is error code 3221225477?" [1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecs/windows_protocols/ms-erref/87fba13e-bf06-450e-83b1-9241dc81e781 https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecs/windows_protocols... [2] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecs/windows_protocols/ms-erref/596a1078-e883-4972-9bbc-49e60bebca55 https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecs/windows_protocols...

boramalper 6y ago
I really enjoyed reading this, thanks! > In this case it's just error code 5: "STATUS_ACCESS_VIOLATION", which is a memory access error, which typically means it's a bug where the program accidentally is trying to read outside of its memory space. What would be a (more) user-friendly error message for this though, given the quite technical nature of the error?
- acqq 6y ago
  In fact the "status access violation" message would be much more confusing for the "normal" non-programmer person. I believe the actual error would be "access violation", status is only the prefix. But I don't think that text would help normal users more. As in: "Who is that General Protection, what has he done to my computer and why is that his fault"? "General Protection Fault" were the words actually presented to the "normal" users before. It surely didn't help them to read that.

EvanAnderson 6y ago

This is probably a good time to ask: Are any of you receiving your checks from Microsoft for all the beta (and, apparently alpha) testing that you're doing? Mine aren't showing up. I'm not sure who to contact about it. /s In the calls that I've gotten my tiny little Customer base has had something like 25 people "down" today. At least ActiveSync on phones and OWA were still working. I know some people were miffed that full-blown Outlook was unusable because it's a major part of their workflow. How did this get past QA? It's simply mind-blowing...

ldiracdelta 6y ago
I just pay it forward. I've written so many bugs.

mathogre 6y ago

I had the problem with Outlook; I have to use it for work. While waiting for the help desk to get back to me on Outlook crashing, I used "quick repair" and it cleaned up the problem. https://redmondmag.com/articles/2019/05/10/repairing-office-365.aspx https://redmondmag.com/articles/2019/05/10/repairing-office-...

WarOnPrivacy 6y ago

Got a call on this a few hours ago. Found the above article & the rollback set us right for now.

ed_elliott_asc 6y ago

With OWA there is no need to use the outlook client anymore

monroeta 6y ago

The link to reinstall old update worked!

monroeta 6y ago

After 5 hours of uninstalling and failed windows system restore points, and a quick 24 google search worked! The below link mentioned really fixed the issue on multiple pcs. Thank you!!!! "%Programfiles%\Common Files\microsoft shared\ClickToRun\officec2rclient.exe" /update user updatetoversion=16.0.12827.20470