Nathan:
Thanks again for your persistence in helping me. Here are my responses to
yours.
MER (storing crash reports)
First, I do not know if this helps, but following your directory as to where
the crash report logs are, I am copying and pasting into this email the
contents of two logs: the console log and the Microsoft Word crash Log.
Here they are:
Console Log Contents:
Mac OS X Version 10.4.2 (Build 8C46)
2005-10-07 12:51:16 -0400
2005-10-07 12:51:20.713 SystemUIServer[202] lang is:en
Oct 7 12:51:37 Michael-Zeiks-Laptop configd[33]: AppleTalk shutdown
failed, status = 71 (retrying)
Oct 7 12:51:37 Michael-Zeiks-Laptop /usr/sbin/AppleFileServer:
AFPServer::AbnormalATListenerShutDown - clear listener
Oct 7 12:51:38 Michael-Zeiks-Laptop configd[33]: Error:
SecTrustedApplicationCreateFromPath() returns 100002
Microsoft Word Crash Log Contents:
**********
Host Name: Michael-Zeiks-Laptop
Date/Time: 2005-09-30 10:33:02.036 -0400
OS Version: 10.4.2 (Build 8C46)
Report Version: 3
Command: Microsoft Word
Path: /Applications/Microsoft Office 2004/Microsoft Word
Parent: WindowServer [63]
Version: 11.2.0 (11.2.0 (050714), © 2004 Microsoft Corporation. All rights
reserved.)
PID: 334
Thread: 0
Exception: EXC_BAD_INSTRUCTION (0x0002)
Code[0]: 0x00000002
Code[1]: 0x07000200
Thread 0 Crashed:
0 ...pple.AppleIntermediateCodec 0x07000200
ZN11iDecodeTile8decode_eEPhS0_S0_S0_iiiii.eh + 15508
1 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x9075ed10 __CFRunLoopDoTimer + 184
2 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x9074b688 __CFRunLoopRun + 1680
3 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x9074ac3c CFRunLoopRunSpecific +
268
4 com.apple.HIToolbox 0x93129ac0 RunCurrentEventLoopInMode
+ 264
5 com.apple.HIToolbox 0x93129154 ReceiveNextEventCommon +
380
6 com.apple.HIToolbox 0x9322e620 ReceiveNextEventInMode +
72
7 MCPZ.stb 0x005934c0 0x561220 + 205472
8 Microsoft Word 0x020f390c 0x2008000 + 964876
9 Microsoft Word 0x020205fc 0x2008000 + 99836
10 Microsoft_Office_2001Z 0x01023454 0x1008000 + 111700
11 Microsoft Word 0x02020078 0x2008000 + 98424
<snipped for brevity¹s sake>
Microsoft Error Report (What Buttons Does It Have):
During the last several reboots of my computer, the MER does not show up in
my dock. Originally, it was showing up (not because I put the application
in the dock, or not because I had it in my ³startup item², but because at
startup it was simply running (I guess trying to send an error report that
never seemed to go out. In my emails, I told you about this so you could
understand that when I started having serious slowdowns with my address book
function in Entourage, Microsoft¹s error reporting mechanism began to
function because it knew that something wasn¹t working right with, my guess,
Entourage. Having said that, the MER has not booted up during the past two
boots. Yet, each time when I restart the computer, I still find ³recovered
files² in my trash. Keep in mind, I always empty the trash before reboot,
so this recovered files are new. In this case, it appears that all of these
files are related to emailing, since even though some are word documents,
the ones I can see relate to documents I had emailed during my last computer
session.
Entourage Questions:
Below are your questions and my inline responses to each:
Are you using the quickfilter in the upper right hand of the window? The
one that has two dropdown menus (usually ³Subject² and ³contains²) and an
edit field? (I¹m assuming so since you¹re talking about an alternative
being the Find dialog.)
Yes, when I encounter the slowness problem, it involves the top upper right
find dialogue box which has the pull down menus of contains name, contains
company, category is, and project is.
Again, are you searching a Directory Service? You can tell if you¹re
searching a directory service via the quickfilter because the Folder List
will show an icon that doesn¹t look like the contact icon in front of the
Address Book [On My Computer] or the networked contact icon in front of
Exchange Contact folders.
I am searching my addressbook [on my computer]. I am not searching a
directory service. I currently am not running exchange and have never run
exchange. (We may do this in the future.).
How many contact items do you have? What is the criteria you¹re using to
search? How many contacts ultimately match that criteria?
I have 2500 contacts in my address book. It was working fine just a couple
of weeks ago. In fact when I search these contacts from within the mail
pane, I don¹t experience any delays. It is only when I switch to the
address book pane.
Again Nathan. I appreciate your help on this. I know I have given you a
ton of information, I hope this is helpful.
On 10/6/05 3:25 PM, in article BF6AC834.8112B%
[email protected],
Answers inline.
On 10/6/05 10:18:33 AM, in article BF6AD4A9.1563%
[email protected],
Nathan,
Thanks again for responding. You raise a couple of issues and I will
respond one issue at a time.
Microsoft Error Report (storing crash reports):
I really don¹t understand your directions for storing crash reports by
default. I just don¹t get what you would like me to do so that I can
store reports and then view them later.
Let me expand on this. There is a way to manually edit preference files to
add preferences to them. The best UI is to use the Property List Editor,
but that is only installed when you install Apple¹s developer tools.
Otherwise, you can edit the files (they¹re usually text files), but you
kind of have to know what you¹re doing. If you open
~/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.error_reporting.plist in a text editor,
you should see XML text. Under the top level ³plist² tag and its child
³dict² tag should be a list of tags that alternate ³key² and then some
value type and value. If you add:
<key>WriteReportToThisFolder</key>
<string>/Users/username/Library/Logs/Microsoft Error Reporting</string>
before the trailing </dict></plist> and save the file (still as text), then
Microsoft Error Reporting will, if that folder exists, write crash reports
in there.
Microsoft Error Report (What buttons does it have?):
I have no buttons regarding MER. I don¹t get ³OK², ³more info², ³send²,
or ³don¹t send.² I get nothing. All I get is the report icon in the
dock. If I double click it, nothing happens except that my pull down
menus reflect that I am in the Error Report program.
Microsoft Error Reporting isn¹t put into the Dock by default. Someone has
added it manually. There¹s no reason to run it manually. It will
automatically run if there is a crash. You were saying it was running at
boot; was there a crash in some Office application that it was reporting,
or is MERP listed in your Login Items as something to launch when booting?
If it¹s the latter, you can safely remove it; there¹s no reason to launch
it at boot.
Searching Contacts (More info):
* When slowdown occurs, it is when I am in the Address book pane.
* If I am sending an email message and typing in contact names as a part
of my email message, it works in a normal fast fashion.
* I am not on Outlook exchange. However, we may go to exchange in the
near future.
* The slowdown does not occur in the mail or calendar pane. In fact, if I
am in the mail pain and use the pull down menu ³edit² and select ³find²
and select ³contacts² it works fine that way too. The slowdown only
occurs when I am inside the address book pane and when I have done a
search in this pane, and try to switch to another pane (When this happens,
address book tries to find all contacts before changing panes and this
causes a significant delay as it is listing all of the contacts before
switching to another pane.
Are you using the quickfilter in the upper right hand of the window? The
one that has two dropdown menus (usually ³Subject² and ³contains²) and an
edit field? (I¹m assuming so since you¹re talking about an alternative
being the Find dialog.) Again, are you searching a Directory Service? You
can tell if you¹re searching a directory service via the quickfilter
because the Folder List will show an icon that doesn¹t look like the
contact icon in front of the Address Book [On My Computer] or the networked
contact icon in front of Exchange Contact folders. How many contact items
do you have? What is the criteria you¹re using to search? How many contacts
ultimately match that criteria?
I hope this helps you figure out what is going on Nathan. I greatly
appreciate your help.
Mike
On 10/6/05 3:43 AM, in article
BF6A2396.80B58%
[email protected], "Nathan Herring [MSFT]"
Ah. Microsoft Error Reporting does not store crash reports by default, so
you won¹t be able to see them just by launching it manually. You can get
it to store crash reports, but it requires a setting not available via
the preferences: add the key ³WriteReportToThisFolder² with a string
value that is a POSIX path to an existing folder to
~/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.error_reporting.plist. I usually
create a folder in ~/Library/Logs named ³Microsoft Error Reporting² and
use that like Apple¹s CrashReporter¹s directory. (But then again, I can
debug my own logs.
When Microsoft Error Reporting popped up, what buttons did it have? Did
it only have an ³OK² button, or a ³More Information², ³Send² and ³Don¹t
Send²? There are some circumstances where it does not believe it can send
the report, and switches to the ³OK² mode, including if there¹s no
network access. In those cases, the above preference can help you view
those reports.
About searching for your contacts, I need some more information: Are you
searching contacts in the Address Book pane? Or in the address book area
of addressing a message? Or are you talking about the autocompletion
dropdown when you are typing in an e-mail address? Again, it also matters
whether you¹re talking about a Directory Service or regular Address Book
/ Exchange Contacts.
-nh
On 10/5/05 8:33:07 AM, in article BF696A73.1477%
[email protected],
Thanks Nathan:
Yes, I have SP2 installed. When I go to the Microsoft Error Report, I
can¹t seem to find any text inside when I double click on it. It seems
to be hung up somehow. The slowness issue behaves like an indexing
problem. Yet, when I use the database utility, it says the database is
fine. Why I say that is I can now tell you when it hangs up precisely.
After I do a search of my contacts, and want to go to email, before I
can go to my email window, it needs to first find all of the contacts
and stays there for about 1 to 2 minutes until all contacts pop up.
Sometime in between finds it does the same, especially when I change my
find criteria from name to company name.
I cannot get a ³report² from the Microsoft Error Report, yet it pops up
at startup. (I have since disabled it since it constantly does it
without sending a an error report to anyone.) I usually find Office
documents in the trash under ³Recovered² folder. It always involves
Entourage files, but it sometimes also includes Word files as well.
Any help to resolve this is greatly appreciated. Mike Zeik
On 10/4/05 4:54 PM, in article
BF683A24.80684%
[email protected], "Nathan Herring [MSFT]"
