COM-Addin and Outlook XP/2002 freeze issues - 2000 and 2003 work fine "Oliver Giesen" <NO.ogware.SPAM[ at ]gmx.ALLOWED.net.INVALID> 8/23/2006 11:42:19 PM Hi all! Something broke in the last release of our COM-addin (written in Delphi 7 using Redemption). It no longer works with Outlook XP (aka 2002). There are absolutely no problems with the same addin under Outlook 2000 and Outlook 2003. The symptoms of the breakage are sudden exits or hangs on certain operations. The behaviour is totally reproducable (i.e. it's always the same steps that lead to a crash or hang) but I haven't been able to figure out how those operations should lead to such behaviour or to make out a common pattern yet. I've got OutputDebugString statements on pretty much every second line in my code by now, including the exception handlers, but, when comparing these logs to those of the same operations performed on an Outlook 2003 installation, there is absolutely nothing indicating a failure or malfunction right up until the point where Outlook just suddenly exits or simply freezes. Are there any known gotchas with Outlook XP that I could have run into? Especially any that do not apply to Outlook 2000 and 2003? If so, where can I find more information about this? I've got a slight suspicion that it might have to do with exception handling because none of the OutputDebugStrings in the exception handlers ever seem to fire even though I feel there *must* be something going wrong... then again I already went through my code and made sure that no exceptions ever bubble up to the surface a year ago. Everything is handled already (unless of course there's something triggering new exceptions inside the exception handlers - but why should that differ between different versions of Outlook?). Help? Cheers, Oliver

Re: COM-Addin and Outlook XP/2002 freeze issues - 2000 and 2003 work fine "Oliver Giesen" <NO.ogware.SPAM[ at ]gmx.ALLOWED.net.INVALID> 8/24/2006 12:00:28 PM Oliver Giesen wrote: [Quoted Text] > The symptoms of the breakage are sudden exits or hangs on certain > operations. Some more bits of information that might (or might not) be useful: * In the case of the sudden exits, my addin receives no BeginShutdown or Disconnection events (_IDTExtensibility2) nor a Quit event from the application object nor do the various explorers or inspectors trigger any Close events but code in unit finalization sections apparently still gets called alright. * A new suspicion: I discovered that I can also trigger the crash by repeating certain operations several times, e.g. opening and closing a dialog that is part of my addin four times. Looks like a memory issue to me. However, I have already used various mem checking tools and there appear to be no leaks. I'm also using the FastMM replacement memory manager which can be run in debug mode and it's also not reporting any memory management issues... any more ideas? Cheers, Oliver

Re: COM-Addin and Outlook XP/2002 freeze issues - 2000 and 2003 work fine Ralf Jansen <Ralf.Jansen[ at ]Schoenmackers.de> 8/25/2006 8:37:00 PM Do you use the MAPIUtils object from Redemption? If so take a look at the Redemption FAQ http://www.dimastr.com/redemption/faq.htm There are some issues mentioned(and workarounds) when using MAPIUtils in OutlookXP. Ralf

Re: COM-Addin and Outlook XP/2002 freeze issues - 2000 and 2003 workfine "Oliver Giesen" <NO.ogware.SPAM[ at ]gmx.ALLOWED.net.INVALID> 8/27/2006 2:11:14 PM Ralf Jansen wrote: [Quoted Text] > Do you use the MAPIUtils object from Redemption? > If so take a look at the Redemption FAQ > > http://www.dimastr.com/redemption/faq.htm > > There are some issues mentioned(and workarounds) when using MAPIUtils > in OutlookXP. You are probably thinking about the notes about having to call MAPIUtils.Cleanup, aren't you? I have by now talked to Dmitry (Redemption's author) and he told me that actually as of Redemption 4.0 this is no longer necessary at all... However, here's another major update to the story: I have by now discovered that the issue appears to have been fixed by Microsoft in Office XP Service Pack 3. If I update Outlook to that service pack, the crashes and freezes go away. The trouble is that the customer I'm doing this for cannot upgrade his workstations in the short term due to internal policy issues (there's 1000 workstations and they're running critical Access applications). In other words I need to find a way to work around the bug. I have already tried to determine which particular hotfix addressed this in the hopes that either the technical description would give me some hints as to what to avoid or at least that maybe installing a highly-focused hotfix would be more acceptable for the customer than doing the full Office update. Unfortunately none of the pre-SP3 hotfixes that are available as standalone downloads seems to be the one I'm looking for. So it must be something that is only available as part of SP3 itself... Any ideas? The closest I've found so far was KB891298 which also speaks of unexpected exits but the rest of the description does not apply at all to my situation (i.e. the problem is not specific to running under Terminal Services and I'm not opening or closing files either). Cheers, Oliver

Re: COM-Addin and Outlook XP/2002 freeze issues - 2000 and 2003 workfine Ralf Jansen <Ralf.Jansen[ at ]Schoenmackers.de> 8/27/2006 6:12:11 PM [Quoted Text] > > You are probably thinking about the notes about having to call > MAPIUtils.Cleanup, aren't you? I have by now talked to Dmitry > (Redemption's author) and he told me that actually as of Redemption 4.0 > this is no longer necessary at all... > My concern was the last point in the FAQ. Does 'no longer necessary' includes that point? That would be great. I have multiple threads with mixed Appartments (STA,MTA) running in my Outlook Plugin. And trying to use just one Instance of MAPIUtils in them makes the hole thing somewhat fragile and easy to break when refactoring/extending. > Any ideas? The closest I've found so far was KB891298 which also speaks > of unexpected exits but the rest of the description does not apply at > all to my situation (i.e. the problem is not specific to running under > Terminal Services and I'm not opening or closing files either). > > Cheers, > > Oliver Sorry, Oliver. Coping with the plethora of Microsofts KB's is far beyond my abilities. :( At this point i would open a support case and let them find it. Ralf