User's PC is unstable
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Ive had one user who was having trouble with Excel like this and it was because she was using 32-bit office which was only using 4gb of memory even though her machine had 16gb memory. So excel was using all the memory it was allowed to but it was not enough and computer freaks out. She was using some large spreadsheets with powerbi. Anyway, moving her to the 64 bit versions fixed all her issues.
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@StorageNinja said in User's PC is unstable:
@Obsolesce said in User's PC is unstable:
Like RemoteApp?
They'll need the licensing for it.Streaming from O365 is bundled with a number of the licensing tiers (we have it, I use it to run the full version of Excel on my Mac). You also can run RDSH in trial mode for 90 days if memory serves.
Given it's been 10 years though, and the user (presumably has work to do in excel) having excel run somewhere else might just be a good way to move on to more important things even if it costs $100-200 (Unless Dash's time is free!)
I was talking about RemoteApp, which requires RDS.
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Oh, the many times I got called the cause of Excel...
I have felt after my encounter with it, is sometimes a specific version is better than the latest, and sometimes an update won't work as a fresh install with the update, and it all depends on Visual C++ runtimes and dot net framework.
That said, nothing helps it more than fresh Windows Install + latest .net + latest C++ and good stable version of it. Also use the 32-bit , and disable addons and macros
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@Emad-R said in User's PC is unstable:
That said, nothing helps it more than fresh Windows Install + latest .net + latest C++ and good stable version of it. Also use the 32-bit , and disable addons and macros
He's done at least most of that already, more than once, I believe.
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@wirestyle22 said in User's PC is unstable:
@Dashrender said in User's PC is unstable:
@scottalanmiller said in User's PC is unstable:
Common factors are: user and Excel.
Assuming other users use Excel for the same spreadsheets without issues, common factor is just the user.
no, the Excel sheets are unique to her. Sadly.
I'd love to blame the user, but I just don't see her doing anything unusual. In fact, from a general perspective, she's one of the least likely people to be doing weird/bad things on her computer.
I'd still test it with a Mandatory roaming profile
Why do you think a mandatory roaming profile would make any difference? I'm curious the thought process here?
She has no roaming profile at all. She saves 90%+ of her stuff to her redirected Documents folder. Documents and Favorites(IE) are the only redirected folders - While directing the desktop can work, I've seen some issues with it and try to avoid it when possible.
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@CCWTech said in User's PC is unstable:
Maybe this has been asked before but are you on 32 bit excel and have you tried 64 bit? I know you said they were small files but I have had problems with the 32 bit version not being able to handle some spreadsheets.
Re-installing Office is on the agenda when she allows me access to her machine.. I could easily move to 64 Bit at that time.
I had been deploying 32 bit until about a month ago. I read that MS is moving away from 32 bit, so I figured now was a good time to change my base image to 64 bit Office.
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@jt1001001 said in User's PC is unstable:
Anytime I see "quirky" things like this I lean towards power and of all things RFI. Get a quality (not A Piece of Crap) online, or at minimum a line interactive UPS. Tripp-Lite Omni series used to be my go to for these issues. Ferrite wrap your cords in case there's any RFI possibly getting in (especially the Ethernet cable) from the AC unit.
She has a Eaton 5S 700 USP. I'd don't have any Ferrite wrapped cords - I'll have to see what I can get.
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@Dashrender said in User's PC is unstable:
@wirestyle22 said in User's PC is unstable:
@Dashrender said in User's PC is unstable:
@scottalanmiller said in User's PC is unstable:
Common factors are: user and Excel.
Assuming other users use Excel for the same spreadsheets without issues, common factor is just the user.
no, the Excel sheets are unique to her. Sadly.
I'd love to blame the user, but I just don't see her doing anything unusual. In fact, from a general perspective, she's one of the least likely people to be doing weird/bad things on her computer.
I'd still test it with a Mandatory roaming profile
Why do you think a mandatory roaming profile would make any difference? I'm curious the thought process here?
She has no roaming profile at all. She saves 90%+ of her stuff to her redirected Documents folder. Documents and Favorites(IE) are the only redirected folders - While directing the desktop can work, I've seen some issues with it and try to avoid it when possible.
Because it's a pre-configured profile. It would prevent her from being able to make any permanent changes to her profile. If it is a case of the user doing something wrong this would be a good way of finding out.
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@gjacobse said in User's PC is unstable:
Have you tried using Libre or Open Office? Yes, I realize it's not the same.. and yada yada... but meh - why not try.
What about if she is wireless? Does anyone else have issues with the spreadsheet?
What about on Ubuntu rather than WIn10?
LOL - no chance in hell the user will give a different application a try.
She was wireless at one point on this machine - in my attempt to remove the NIC/cabling from the equation, things were not any more stable.
She shares very few spreadsheets with other people, those that she does, there are no reported issues (in general). I'll make a dedicated post about a singular issue we had last week.
OMG - ROFLOL - seriously - give Ubuntu to a user - man, that's rich... likely will never happen around here - I was in a meeting 3 weeks ago where I requested that use use Linux for a server project for our HVAC systems, and was told - NOPE you can't use that because there would be no one to support it if you died. I sighed and moved on.
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Last week a user had exported a XLS from an application which was then opened in Excel 2016. The application that created the XLS form and somehow locked a column to a non-numerical data type that we were unable to change, even using right click > format cells > Number tab > Number.
The form was emailed to my boss, who saved it as an XLSX file, and upon opening that file, my boss saw little green triangles in the upper left hand corners of this entire column. Clicking on the green triangle allowed my boss to see an error message with an option to change the data type - totally weird, but it allowed her to change the data type, and then do a summation on the whole column.
The original user (OU) did not see these green triangles. Eventually I found that the OU did not have the Error Checking option enabled (File > Option > Formulas > Error Checking > Enable background error checking). Upon enabling this, the OU did have the green triangles and was able to modify the column data type.
This is the only reported Excel related issue between my boss and another user in more than 5 years.
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@black3dynamite said in User's PC is unstable:
It's been years ago, but the last time I dealt with excel issues. It was because of the Intel storage controller.
Really? What was the solution?
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@Dashrender said in User's PC is unstable:
@gjacobse said in User's PC is unstable:
Have you tried using Libre or Open Office? Yes, I realize it's not the same.. and yada yada... but meh - why not try.
What about if she is wireless? Does anyone else have issues with the spreadsheet?
What about on Ubuntu rather than WIn10?
LOL - no chance in hell the user will give a different application a try.
She was wireless at one point on this machine - in my attempt to remove the NIC/cabling from the equation, things were not any more stable.
She shares very few spreadsheets with other people, those that she does, there are no reported issues (in general). I'll make a dedicated post about a singular issue we had last week.
OMG - ROFLOL - seriously - give Ubuntu to a user - man, that's rich... likely will never happen around here - I was in a meeting 3 weeks ago where I requested that use use Linux for a server project for our HVAC systems, and was told - NOPE you can't use that because there would be no one to support it if you died. I sighed and moved on.
You can't just use NTG/bundy and associates as a fallback?
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@StorageNinja said in User's PC is unstable:
@Dashrender said in User's PC is unstable:
Spinrite wouldn't report any issues
Sooooo that hasn't been updated in over 10 years. Also, who the hell is using magnetic drives for boot/applications?!?!
I'd expect office to pause/stutter, that's known behavior for running it from magnetic media.
Spinrite has been shown to solve issues on SSDs as well. The user has an SSD.
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@StorageNinja said in User's PC is unstable:
@Obsolesce said in User's PC is unstable:
Like RemoteApp?
They'll need the licensing for it.Streaming from O365 is bundled with a number of the licensing tiers (we have it, I use it to run the full version of Excel on my Mac). You also can run RDSH in trial mode for 90 days if memory serves.
Given it's been 10 years though, and the user (presumably has work to do in excel) having excel run somewhere else might just be a good way to move on to more important things even if it costs $100-200 (Unless Dash's time is free!)
We don't have O365. Where would it stream from? And by stream, I assume you just mean a RDSH server. I also assume you mean for me to setup an RDSH server ($900 license) and a RDSH license ($125) for this one user. Sure, I can likely do a 90 day test for this user.
On the plus side, I do have Office Pro Plus 2016 VA licenses, and those can be used on RDSH, so no requirement to buy O365 E3 or better. -
@scottalanmiller said in User's PC is unstable:
@Emad-R said in User's PC is unstable:
That said, nothing helps it more than fresh Windows Install + latest .net + latest C++ and good stable version of it. Also use the 32-bit , and disable addons and macros
He's done at least most of that already, more than once, I believe.
Yep, every new computer was a fresh install of Windows and all other components. As already mentioned, until recently I had only been deploying 32 bit versions of Office, but recently changed to 64 bit versions. We don't use any add-ons here, and macros are disabled by default in Office these days.
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@wirestyle22 said in User's PC is unstable:
@Dashrender said in User's PC is unstable:
@wirestyle22 said in User's PC is unstable:
@Dashrender said in User's PC is unstable:
@scottalanmiller said in User's PC is unstable:
Common factors are: user and Excel.
Assuming other users use Excel for the same spreadsheets without issues, common factor is just the user.
no, the Excel sheets are unique to her. Sadly.
I'd love to blame the user, but I just don't see her doing anything unusual. In fact, from a general perspective, she's one of the least likely people to be doing weird/bad things on her computer.
I'd still test it with a Mandatory roaming profile
Why do you think a mandatory roaming profile would make any difference? I'm curious the thought process here?
She has no roaming profile at all. She saves 90%+ of her stuff to her redirected Documents folder. Documents and Favorites(IE) are the only redirected folders - While directing the desktop can work, I've seen some issues with it and try to avoid it when possible.
Because it's a pre-configured profile. It would prevent her from being able to make any permanent changes to her profile. If it is a case of the user doing something wrong this would be a good way of finding out.
eh? Not following - the user would be unable to save changes to the profile - sure, might not even be able to make specific changes, i.e. add a printer, save to the desktop, etc.... But those types of things should have zero bearing on this issue - right?
I suppose I could do that as a test - but my boss frequently saves things to her desktop. Removing that ability, even for a test, would be frustrating to say the least.
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@Dashrender said in User's PC is unstable:
@wirestyle22 said in User's PC is unstable:
@Dashrender said in User's PC is unstable:
@wirestyle22 said in User's PC is unstable:
@Dashrender said in User's PC is unstable:
@scottalanmiller said in User's PC is unstable:
Common factors are: user and Excel.
Assuming other users use Excel for the same spreadsheets without issues, common factor is just the user.
no, the Excel sheets are unique to her. Sadly.
I'd love to blame the user, but I just don't see her doing anything unusual. In fact, from a general perspective, she's one of the least likely people to be doing weird/bad things on her computer.
I'd still test it with a Mandatory roaming profile
Why do you think a mandatory roaming profile would make any difference? I'm curious the thought process here?
She has no roaming profile at all. She saves 90%+ of her stuff to her redirected Documents folder. Documents and Favorites(IE) are the only redirected folders - While directing the desktop can work, I've seen some issues with it and try to avoid it when possible.
Because it's a pre-configured profile. It would prevent her from being able to make any permanent changes to her profile. If it is a case of the user doing something wrong this would be a good way of finding out.
eh? Not following - the user would be unable to save changes to the profile - sure, might not even be able to make specific changes, i.e. add a printer, save to the desktop, etc.... But those types of things should have zero bearing on this issue - right?
I suppose I could do that as a test - but my boss frequently saves things to her desktop. Removing that ability, even for a test, would be frustrating to say the least.
She's being inconvenienced right now. She needs to be willing to be inconvenienced further to determine the issue. If she isn't then the situation is resolved as fully as it can be until she changes her mind. I wouldn't have suggested this if the new computers weren't fine for awhile and then started running into issues every single time. I think it's a good test considering that.
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@scottalanmiller said in User's PC is unstable:
Common factors are: user and Excel.
Assuming other users use Excel for the same spreadsheets without issues, common factor is just the user.
My thoughts exactly after reading through this whole thread.
If I was in @Dashrender position, I would push for a hosted app solution for this user. Deep down we know it is the user, but using a hosted solution gives this user (in this case, your boss) no more chances to correlate the issue to excel. Only one constant remains and at this point it wont even need to be noted because it will be obvious.
I would buy O365 license for one month and have the user test out using on Excel Online.
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@Dashrender said in User's PC is unstable:
@scottalanmiller said in User's PC is unstable:
Common factors are: user and Excel.
Assuming other users use Excel for the same spreadsheets without issues, common factor is just the user.
she's one of the least likely people to be doing weird/bad things on her computer.
I hear similar logic when former friends/family talk about convicted murderers ...
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@IRJ said in User's PC is unstable:
@scottalanmiller said in User's PC is unstable:
Common factors are: user and Excel.
Assuming other users use Excel for the same spreadsheets without issues, common factor is just the user.
My thoughts exactly after reading through this whole thread.
If I was in @Dashrender position, I would push for a hosted app solution for this user. Deep down we know it is the user, but using a hosted solution gives this user (in this case, your boss) no more chances to correlate the issue to excel. Only one constant remains and at this point it wont even need to be noted because it will be obvious.
I would buy O365 license for one month and have the user test out using on Excel Online.
OK - Let's say I stand up a RDSH server - what lock downs do you do on the server to 'prevent the user from screwing up the system'?
i.e. how is she screwing up a local PC as a non admin, where she won't be able to on an RDSH box?
or are you suggesting that I move all of her excel files into OneDrive for Business and force her to use Excel Online?
