Excel causes system freeze

[Jim Rattray]

That's of no help when you need to share Excel files with those who
CANNOT open .xlsx format.

I've been waiting for a fix since January and have reverted 100% to
2004. All the other 2008 Office apps are fine and stable.

- Jim

I was having the same issue on a new MacBook Pro running Mac Office 2008. I found most of the files causing the issue were 2004 or earlier and when trying to maximize, system would freeze. I started saving the files upon opening into the latest Office format (.xlsx) and the maximizing issues went away..> Excel is causing the whole system to freeze -- requiring a restart. Seemsto be related to maximizing the document window.

MacBook Pro 15" C2D 2GB RAM
MacOS X 10.5.2

We have:
- archive / installed OSX
- applied all OS updates
- reinstalled Office 2008
- repaired permissions

Problem is reproducible, though not every time.

While Excel is running, we see the following message repeated in the logmultiple times per second:

2/21/08 5:15:22 PM Microsoft Excel[214] CGBitmapContextGetData: invalid context

Right before the freeze, we usually get the following message one or more times in the log:

2/21/08 4:57:25 PM kernel NVChannel(GL): Graphics channel timeout!

 

[dave.tmccl]

I was having the same issue on a new MacBook Pro running Mac Office 2008. I found most of the files causing the issue were 2004 or earlier and when trying to maximize, system would freeze. I started saving the files upon opening into the latest Office format (.xlsx) and the maximizing issues went away..

Have tried saving files as .xlsx but unfortunately (and inevitably)
the freeze issue remains. Also, I think I was having the problem
before I reverted to using .xls files.
Spoke to someone from microsoft yesterday who assures me they have
booted this up the priority ladder and are taking it seriously.

- Dave

 

[Thomas Frank]

I have the same problem. Excel Mac 2008 crashers EVERYTIME I try to maximize a window. Here is the weird thing that may help figure this out. Not sure if this will matter, and I will continue to experiment, but when I have only ONE spreadsheet open, I can minimize, maximize, window, up, down, and all around, and no crashes. But, with TWO windows open, I can change windows states about 2-5 times, and I get the kernel panic of death (entire Mac OS crashes). This is with Mac OS Leopard with the most recent updates, and Excel 2008 with the most recent updates.

This is getting rediculous. I cannot believe that M$ and Apple cannot solve this sooner than this!!!!!!

I hope this info helps. I will keep testing...

 

[Joey T]

Same issue here. Before I loaded Office 2008, my non MSFT mac has been a absolute dream machine. No lockup's, no problems, then I load one stupid MSFT product and it messes up my entire machine. The hour a week I saved in productivity is now lost, I have to hard boot to exit excel. On a side note, I am very happy to see their market share drop like a rock, that's what they deserve for making such a crappy product.

My 2 cents

 

[Jeff Hancott]

Same issue here. Before I loaded Office 2008, my non MSFT mac has been a absolute dream machine. No lockup's, no problems, then I load one stupid MSFT product and it messes up my entire machine. The hour a week I saved in productivity is now lost, I have to hard boot to exit excel. On a side note, I am very happy to see their market share drop like a rock, that's what they deserve for making such a crappy product.

My 2 cents

Dude, this issue is with Apple's Display (nV) drivers. It's not the MacBU's fault in any way whatsoever. I have a new MacBook Pro and it has the same exact problem, but mirrored throughout the OS and multiple applications. Expect a fix in 10.5.3 or a supplementary graphics update.

 

[Pat McMillan]

Thanks Jeff for chiming in! You're right that we've identified this as an OS
driver issue and there are many reports on the web of this exact same
problem affecting multiple applications -- not just Excel. It happens that
there are a set of steps in Excel that consistently cause the problem. If it
made sense for Microsoft to fix the problem, it would. But in this case, the
problem is very fundamentally a driver problem, so we think the right thing
to do is to let Apple and Nvidia provide a fix. We are doing everything we
can to help and encourage Apple to provide a fix. We're as hopeful as all of
you that a fix will be coming soon.

Thanks,

Pat

 

[fontace]

Can someone confirm that this issue has been resolved by the Office 2008 SP1 published yesterday?

It seems to be fixed on my machine, but I would like to get a confirmation by others...

 

[Bob Greenblatt]

Can someone confirm that this issue has been resolved by the Office 2008 SP1
published yesterday?

It seems to be fixed on my machine, but I would like to get a confirmation by
others...

Did you read the release notes? It is supposed to be fixed.

 

[Bradford Chang]

Unfortunately, both Word & Excel are still polluting my console log:

5/14/08 6:59:21 AM Microsoft Excel[18127] CGBitmapContextGetData: invalid context ...etc.

I was hoping the SP1 update would fix this. I haven't had a crash yet, but I haven't had a chance to really put it through its paces. It is not a good sign, though, that the same error is appearing in the system logs.

 

[Pat McMillan]

As I said in this thread a few posts ago, the system freeze bug is *not* an
Excel bug! We did not provide a fix in SP1 and are still waiting on a fix
from Apple or Nvidia.

We did not fix the issue of CGBitmapContextGetData messages in the console
in SP1, but are tracking it for a possible fix in the future. But it is
completely unrelated to the system freeze issue, and as far as we are aware
the only user impact of the messages is that it clutters up the console log.

Thanks,

Pat

Unfortunately, both Word & Excel are still polluting my console log:

5/14/08 6:59:21 AM Microsoft Excel[18127] CGBitmapContextGetData: invalid
context ...etc.

I was hoping the SP1 update would fix this. I haven't had a crash yet, but I
haven't had a chance to really put it through its paces. It is not a good
sign, though, that the same error is appearing in the system logs.

Did you read the release notes? It is supposed to be fixed.

 

[dave.tmccl]

Can someone confirm that this issue has been resolved by the Office 2008 SP1 published yesterday?

It seems to be fixed on my machine, but I would like to get a confirmationby others...

Likewise, SP1 seems to have fixed it on my machine.

 

[PJ van Dyk]

Hi,

I still have the freezing issues even after the SP1 update. I use a MacBook Air with a Intel GMA X3100 GPU and Mac OS X 10.5.2.

I highly doubt that this is Apple / Nvida Driver issue as I have seen this issue on mac's with various GPU's.

PJ

 

[Pat McMillan]

Are you talking about the bug where clicking on the maximize window bug
causes a system freeze? If so, this has been tracked to an OS/driver bug and
affects many different applications. We have posted a bug with Apple about
it. Or are you talking about another issue?

 

[PJ van Dyk]

Hi Pat,

I am talking about the issue where performing some actions in Excel causes constant system freeze's. This mostly happens when trying to scroll through a spreadsheet.

I noticed that when Excel is maximized its still useable, but slow. When not maximized its not useable at all as it constantly freezes.

PJ

 

[Pat McMillan]

Hi PJ,

There were many manifestations of the system freeze issue that were found
when investigating this bug, so it's hard to say for sure what you're
experiencing. But I've been tracking this newsgroup closely since we shipped
12.0 and I haven't seen another class of bugs besides the one affecting
computers with Nvidia video cards in which Excel causes system freezes. I
collected system profiles from about 25 people and of those 23 or so had
machines with Nvidia video cards and were running Leopard. There were a few
reports on other environments, but we haven't been able to reproduce them.
Our developers looked into this and the other reports with other
applications and have determined that it's a driver issue. If you would like
to send me your system profile and a file that repros this consistently, we
can look into it. But we've spent a lot of time investigating this and keep
coming to the same conclusion -- that this isn't a flaw in Excel. Honestly,
if we thought it was our bug, we would be all over it. We fixed hundreds of
bugs in SP1. If we felt like this was our bug it would have been near the
very top of that list of SP1 bugs. If you would like to send me a profile
and/or files, please send directly to (e-mail address removed).

Thanks,

Pat

 

[Howard Yen]

I have Macbook Pro 2.2 Santa Rosa model.
I've been experiencing with system crash when excel worksheet is being maximize.
After Leopard 10.5.3 update, this issue has been resolved along with a faster application launch time. :smile:
afterall, I think it was Apple's problem.
Good job on both Apple and Microsoft. :smile:

 

[Pat McMillan]

Thanks for letting us know! That's great news. I look forward to other
reports. I hope they have the same luck you did with 10.5.3!

Pat

 

[Sergio Banchelli]

The problem exist also after 10.5.3. Excel freezes the system. Reboot needed. (Macbook Penryn 2.4). Please solve this issue.

Sergio

 

[Pat McMillan]

Several people who were encountering this consistently have told me that
they no longer see the problem after upgrading to 10.5.3. If you would be
willing to send me a system profile it would really help me investigate.

Thanks,

Pat
(e-mail address removed)

 

[fontace]

Hello Pat,

I had the problem with Excel and could reproduce it whenever I wanted to. My MBP is a Penryn 2,4 GHz model.

I confirm that it does not happen anymore since I have applied the Office 2008 SP1. Still OK after the 10.5.3 update.

But there are a lot of lines like "CGBitmapContextGetData: invalid context" written into the system log by every Office 2008 applications... when I say "a lot", it's really filling the log file! I guess that you are aware of this issue but is there a fix on the way?? Thanks.