We have a strange problem here in our environment. Wheneverour usersopen a Word DOC or DOCX from a SharePoint UNC path Word, Internet Explorer, and often Windows Explorer all freeze. After about10-12 minutes these process usually start responding again, but more frequentlywe find it necesasry to manually power-down the machine to restart it (because this process also tends to hang). In fact,we cant even using the Task Manager to kill the WINWORD.EXE process. Basically, if we don't wait for the document to open, we have to restart the PC manually. Were using MOSS 2007 standard editionconfiguredon 2 servers -IIS and SQL. End user computers are mostly running XP Pro SP2, a couple with Vista Enterprise. All machines have IE7, Office 2007 and Office 2003 Web Components installed (some have been set up from scratch and never had the Office 2003 suite, others have been upgraded). What is interesting is that throughout the development and testing of our site we never ran into this problem, it has only been since our go live last week that4 users so far have called with this problem (2 of these computers are new within the past 6 months). We have about 120 users total and are concerned about being able to use the document library for all of our shared documents. What is interesting is that it seems to happen when these users are accessing the document library through a mapped drive (UNC path) or the library's Explorer View. Weve mapped a drive so that users can (if they wish) continue to access these shared documents through windows explorer, etc. rather than going through the sharepoint site, since the document library itself loses some functionality like hierarchical folder view/expansion and drag/drop. It seems that if the users access the same documents using the standard SharePoint document library UI the problem does not occur. We initially thought wed run into an issue of being out of space on the SQL server, however we have resolved that and the issue still exists. We also found an issue with a network switch that was causing problems with network traffic to the servers, although that has also been fixed and the problem has not gone away. I can reproduce the issue, and it happens more regularly with certain documents than others, but they're all basic Word files (I have not seen the issue come up with any other type of file, including Excel). Id really like to find an answer to this - hopefully someone will have some insight. Thanks in advance! Chanda

Are you using Integrated Windows Authentication? If that's your goal, are you positive that your SharePoint portal is in the "Intranet" zone in IE? That may be one thing that will help it. Another thing is to make sure that it's the FQDN (and not just the NetBIOS name) that is being used for UNC path. I recommend checking that your portal uses a FQDN in the Alternate Access Mappings section of Central Admin, too. One last thought, try it with Windows Firewall turned off on the client PC. If it starts working right away, than you know that you should tune your firewall exceptions. Good luck! PlateSpinner

Thanks for your reply. I have confirmed that we added the site to the Intranet zone in IE since we are in fact using integrated Windows authentication but it made no difference. I also tested with the Windows Firewall turned off on the client PC - again no change. I have not yet tested using the FQDN but will try that today. Also, I just wanted to clarify that the issue does not happen with every document in the document library, it is only some of them. Some of them I can open over and over and never have an issue; others will cause a problem the first time, and every time,I try to open. A few will cause a problem intermittently, and I cannot see anything about these documents that would set them apart from the ones that we have no trouble opening. A couple of other things I've done to test/troubleshoot: I have tried mapping a drive to the UNC path, the URL and the IP address - I have the problem with all 3 methods. I have tried to move the files to a folder with a shorter name (as I thought there might be a limit on the length of the name of a folder/file) - I still have the problem. I have tested with my client A/V turned off, and also with the A/V on the IIS server turned off - I still have the problem. I have not yet tested with the A/V on the SQL server off but may try that. A couple of new things we've noticed about the issue in testing further: It does not appear to be an issue at all on machines running Vista - we have 2 in production and we cannot reproduce the issue on either. If I copy the offending files to a new folder I am able to opena fewof them in a row (4-6), and then any others I open after that freeze up. Thanks again, Chanda

I've also tried using the FQDN in the UNC path for my mapped drive (after updating the AAM in Central Admin) - again no change, still freezes when opening some of the documents.

Chanda,Have you made any progress on this issue? We have the exact same problem in our office.Majority of the time it all works just fine, but sometimes Word will randomly hang opening up from Sharepoint 2007 via UNC. It locks up the entire computer, cannot kill the processes.All workstations are Windows XP SP3. Some Office 2007 SP1, most Office 2003 SP3. All workstations and servers are fully updated from Microsoft Update.*It seems a possible workaround is to already have Word open and running in the background before you open the file from Sharepoint. I can't get it to lockup doing it that way, but that's obviously not a real solution.Thank you,

Bulldog,I finally broke down and called Microsoft support - so far I've spent almost 20 hours on the phone with them, albeit at least half of that just to get to someone that can actually help me. I am now working with 2nd level networking support. That aside, I think we are making some progress on the issue and I hope to have it resolved very soon.It boils down to issues with the webclient services in XP and Server 2003,and apparently is fixed with Vista and Server 2008. So far we've done quite a few things but I think what has worked for my original client machine was a hotfixupdate to the service on the SharePoint server, plus a hotfixupdate to the service on the client machine, plus a registry change. Unfortunately I've tried the same on another client computer and it has not corrected the issue, so I am scheduled to speak to the support technician again this afternoon. Hopefully we can fix this next machine and determine exactly what's necessary to correct the issue; at that point I'd like to reproduce the fix on at least 1 more computer before I feel comfortable moving on rolling the updates out to all machines.If you can wait I'd say hold on for a few more days until I can hopefully get a final answer and then I can post the full details as well as hotfix numbers, etc. so that if you do have to contact Microsoft for the fix at least you can save yourself the headache.Chanda

Any additional word on a fix for this issue?Thanks

Hey Chanda,Have you gotten a this resolved yet? I'm also experiencing some problems with IE7 locking up on me with sharepoint.Thanks,Sunshine

Chanda,Please let us know if Microsoft was able to give you any help on this issue -Thank you!Bulldog

Sorry for the late reply - my alerts do not seem to be coming through for threads that I've marked...We have one computer that is working but have not been able to reproduce the fix on another one, so I'm still in the process of working with Microsoft support. We've been delayed some due to conflicting schedules between me (on the east coast) and the support rep (on the west coast), but we finally got together this week. They had me run a series of reports on the working machine and the non-working machine so that they could compare to find out what is still different. I am hoping that those details will point them in the right direction on how to reproduce the fix - as soon as that happens I'll test on another computer to be sure and then hopefully we'll have all the info as to how to correct the issue for all of our computers. I'll certainly post here as soon as that happens. I sent the information to Microsoft support about 48 hours ago so I am hoping to get a response any time now.Chanda

Hi Chanda,Any news from MS about this issue?I have the same problem as well and is desperate to get a fix for it.Is it possible to get the case number you have with MS?Thanks,Nicklas

Did you gain any Progress on this? I'm experiencing it with my xp sp2 machines.Thanks,Sunhine

I have followed up twice with Microsoft so far and have only gotten the response that they are still looking through the reports. I will call the support rep (and their managers if needed) today and see if I can get the ball moving and let you know what I find out ASAP.

Hi all,Any progress with MS Chanda?I guess thiswas a tricky one :-)/Nicklas

Ditto problem in our environment. I have observed that accessing documents using a web folder to SharePoint document library always opens the documents problem free; accessing documents using mapped drive (unc path) always freezes-up everything, even normal shutdown would not work and need to power off the machine!Ravi.

Did you ever find a fix? I'm running XP SP2, IE7, Office 2003, and 2007 comaptibility pack. When I try to open word docs from unc to sharepoint it locks up. If I roll it back to IE6 it works just fine. I'm at a loss here with this problem. I've tried webfldrs.msi and the web folders kb, but no luck. What's frustrating is that I have other machines that work just fine. It seems to be some KB has broke it along the way.

Well, I'm really no further with Microsoft on this after about 30 hours of troubleshooting and testing with them so far. I have found the same thing as Sunshine in that if I roll back to IE6 then the issue goes away and have passed this along to MS also. I (and so far apparently Microsoft support either) cannot figure out what the different is between the machines that are working and those that are not. In fact, on the machine that I thought was working fine I can actually reproduce the problem under a different user account, so I feel like I'm making negative progress on this! Anyway, I'm scheduled again to speak to support this afternoon and we'll see what they say.

Thanks for the response. Just to let you know I followed my build document to the bone to try reproduce the problem. I had no luck. It worked just fine. So what I did next was compare the MS updates. To come to find out Microsoft has taken some KB updates out since my last build, so it's really hard to pinpoint. I'm guessing one of the updates they've taken out since then is the culprit and it really hoses web folders up.

Sorry to bug Chanda, but I was wandering what happened with MS Support on this issue.

Has anyone found a resolution to this issue?It seems as though this is wide spread so MS need to come up with a fix if they have not done so already.Chanda - are you still around and did you ever find a fix for this please?Kind regards,David

Do the clients affected have a mixed installation of Office 2003 and Office 2007? Any Office product like Viso or Project still running 2003? Cheers, Ivan Sanders SharePoint Architect Dimension Solutions, Inc. http://dimension-si.com/blog http://linkedin.com/in/iasanders http://twitter.com/iasanders http://delicious.com/iasanders

I have exactly the same problem here except that in switching into Explorer View "hang" my client.Iam running Vista 32 Ultimate with Office 2007 SP1.When I want to copy file on the desktop then boun freeze and hang againSo I am very interested to see the fix if anyjp

Anyone heard from Chanda or resolved this.?There are a few workarounds but Im looking for a fox.ThanksSukh

Hey everyone, No, unfortunately we never did get a fix from Microsoft. We've ended up working with our users to get them to use the SharePoint UI rather than the mapped drive as much as possible, even though it's much less efficient, and so most folks are used to this now. I have been out on maternity leave so Microsoft has closed the issue; although I have the option of reopening the ticket with them but as of right now we're not going to pursue it. The organization plans to implement Vista with all replacement computers going forward so it will eventually no longerbe a problem. Anyway, I'm really disappointed in the lack of a fix to this issue considering the huge amount of time I spent working with Microsoft support, but I guess we'll live with it for now. Chanda

Thanks, Chanda, for having kept us informed :) I had posted a request for resolution on this, but having read this thread, consensus may be that Windows Explorer is not best used in this particular setup.We are going through the same issue, and I suppose its not going to get anywhere as far as using Windows Explorer. What we've done to give some semblance of an explorer view is to go to My Network Places, click on the Add a Network Place, "Choose another network location", and then enter the url of https://myconnection.companyname.../user/personaldocuments, which creates a webfolder share that you can copy to the desktop and drag n drop just like the intended mapped drive. The folders look all funky, and you can't map it to a drive per se, but its a nice addition to the regular UI and the documents so far all open up immediately. We just move the shortcut to the desktop for the users that are having trouble. We would have like the other way, of course.Most times for us it was when opening Word documents. We had to end the winword.exe process to regain functionality (if it didn't end, we had to shutdown). But interestingly, if you open an Excel spreadsheet first, then Word opens up fine. Move to another folder then Word freezes again. Obviously we weren't going to tell users to remember to open Excel files first in each folder :)But well thanks for confirming that there is an issue, and that in this XP, SP situation,Explorer might not be the best use for accessing files on Sharepoint. Did they confirm that this was fixed in Win2k8 and Vista?

According to MS the issue is resolved with Server 2008 and Vista, however there is a post above from a user where Vista is experiencing the issue (although maybe Server is not 2008).Chanda

Hi Chanda.I have exactly the same problem.I really do not understand Microsoft attitude. Do they really expect that a big organization, with an environment based on server 2003 and a lot of windows XP PRO on their work station, to just suddenly convert to Windows Vista and 2008 server only because of a single MS system dost work as expected ina MICROSOFTenvironment? This is shameful!! Anyway Id like to ask you, if you have given up and allow Microsoft win the battle. The reason why Im asking is that you have been so persistent and you were so close to make Microsoft work seriously on the problem. Anyway, tell me that you havent given up please. Best regard Pasquale Castelluccio

I spent 2 days trying to diagnose this and it appears in our case there were a couple of things potentially causing the issue.First of all, users were not being given a home drive and they were not permitted to access the C:\ drive by Group Policy. They were supposed to save to a network share mapped to the Personal Docs library on their My Site. The problem with this is if you don't set a home drive, Windows defaults to using their My Documents which they can't because it's on the C:\ drive.Secondly, you'll notice when you open a Word document, Word creates a temporary file, which has a ~ character in it. This is not a permitted filename in SharePoint so I assumed that this was causing an issue as other Office apps which don't create temporary files like this, such as PowerPoint, Excel, etc worked fine.Weird.

Hi,please turn off the Web Client service, if you don't need UNC. This will solve the issue with Winword Documents in the Explorer View. There is also an oportunity to keep the UNC-path with the WebClient-Service. You have to modify the Registry Key"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\WebClient\Parameters" the "ServerNotFoundCacheLifeTimeInSec" (in decimal) from "60" to "2" - after this changeyour Word will open faster.I you don't get an UNC-path even if you already have the WebClient-Service startedyou have to modify your provider order in "Network Connections" -> "Advanced" -> "Advanced Settings..." in the registercard "Provider Order" move the "Web Client Network" up to the first position.thanks and regardsPlatinion

Generally Word will hang if the user does not have write access to the SharePoint area they are accessing as well. This can often be the root cause of the problem if the user can successfully open an Excel document via the same access mechanism. The problem can be further masked if the SharePoint area being accessed is part of an EPM / Project Server 2007 environment as the user will likely be able to successfully open via the IE interface. In this case the user has probably been added to the Schedule (or project plan, or Gantt chart - I have heard all these used!) as a team member which gives them Read access, once they are assigned to a task they then get "Contribute" access rights i.e. Read / Write. This is not the answer to everyone's problems with Word and hangs / crashes, there are some other great answers earlier in the thread which will resolve the majority of issues, especially the OWSSUPP.DLL circumvention. Thanks and Regards JT

PLATINION: Do not propose your own posts as answers. It isn't helpful. FAQ sites: (SP 2010) http://wssv4faq.mindsharp.com; (v3) http://wssv3faq.mindsharp.com and (WSS 2.0) http://wssv2faq.mindsharp.com Complete Book Lists (incl. foreign language) on each site.

Hi, has anybody solution to this problem? I'm facing to same symptomps, but no success. Thanks Petr