Office 2013 missing after June 11 Microsoft auto upates

I have been using Linux a lot lately. I love it and I have far less problems overall. But that is not an option for a lot of people, sad to say.

Pretty much all programs have minimal hardware requirements. But when using a graphics card that has the minimal requirements and it still causes problems, it raises concerns. Especially when the OFFCAT.msi Office compatibility program runs and gives you the ok. If it is just the one card, you look at the card manufacturer. If it is several different cards then you look at a weakness in the programming of the software, such as Outlook. Too early to tell yet, but who knows. Microsoft trying to take advantage of hardware acceleration may be a problem for a number of reasons. Perhaps they need to perfect the manner in which Office does that. But who knows. It may not even be that. But, for a lot of computers it does seem to be involved. And I think that it is a little irresponsible for MS to expect all of its Office users to be knowledgeable enough to be able to isolate hardware acceleration as the problem and know how to fix it. Most of the people I assist would not even know how to look up a problem on the Microsoft website, much less how to implement a fix. Perhaps they need to improve the installation program's detection feature so that it does a better job of automatically turning off the feature when there is a chance it might cause  a problem.

But once again, that is just one man's opinion. A multi-billion dollar company is in a better position to deal with this that the average computer user. So I say, take the burden of dealing with whether to have it on or off from the end-user and lay it on the installation program. If that OFFCAT.msi program can determine if a computer is compatible with its hardware acceleration, then I say add its job to the installation and make Office do the work. Just a thought. Could save a lot of what we see going on right now, POSSIBLY.... Don't flame me. These are just thoughts on the subject that I think such a large company could do for its customer base.

Same here. And Microsoft names Office "Productivity product"! 

Congratulations to the Microsoft developers and thanks for the time I am wasting.

I will also change to Linux ASAP

Office 2013 has a certain video requirement:

Performance and display issues in Office 2013 client applications:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2768648

The symptom really shows up in Outlook:

Outlook 2013 hangs due to hardware acceleration - Slipstick Systems:

http://www.slipstick.com/outlook/2013/outlook-2013-hangs-due-hardware-acceleration/

Not sure if this is the same issue that everyone else is having, but I finally installed the June 11 updates today.  I had worked on getting fixed all day with no luck, even re-installing as recommended on this site.  I finally ended up on tech support with MS.  I let the tech remote into my machine and Outlook instantly opened.  He logged out and I couldn't open it.  He logged back in and it opened fine.  He then (while logged in) turned off Graphic acceleration in Outlook and set Data Execution Prevention to "Turn on DEP for all programs and services except those i select"  since then everything works fine.  Just thought I would throw this out there in case it can cut down someone else's trouble shooting time.

That actually is possibly very helpful. A few of us have noticed that turning off the Graphics acceleration for some graphics cards is affecting performance considerably. We suspect that the manufacturer needs to fine-tune the drivers for that particular card. Now whether that is causing a problem with Office, I can't say. It just seems a coincidence that you would mention it. The DEP thing makes sense since it protects vital files from instructions that come from an unsafe source. A corrupted update could be just such a source. These are early on guesses, but they do make sense in light of what you are saying. And in the registry, a lot of Office entries make reference to a .NET file called mscorsvw.exe. This file is involved in .Net's operation of precompiling and it has been noticed that when it is running it can cause Outlook to lock up until it is done. Now when any file starts causing programs to lock up, it is a bad thing. With this happening, it would seem that MS should be taking a very close look at how .NET is interacting with Office and especially how this latest update might have affected this interaction. It was causing problems on some machines beforehand, but after the update perhaps changes were made that some configurations could not handle without Office crashing. There is another problem. This mscorsvw.exe file is on Windows 7 by default in .NET 4.0 and is found here: C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319 . Now, if you have installed an older program that needs .NET 2.0 it also comes with an older version of mscorsvw.exe located here: C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727 . If you installed that older program and thus the NET Framework 2.0, it is very possible that your Windows 7 machine is now using the older version of mscorsvw.exe during its interactions with Office and I am sure that cannot be a good thing. This is all just speculation right now, but what is not speculation is the fact that registry entries for the new Office refer to mscorsvw.exe many, many times. If there is more than one version on the computer I can see it causing problems with Office. Since mscorsvw.exe can lock Outlook up for 5 to 10 minutes while it is running, I can also see where if it got loose so to speak, it could wreak havoc on your Office installation. Now, I did a search on my computer for mscorsvw.exe and it came back with no results. But when I looked in those places above manually, I found it. I do not know why it did not show up in a Search of my hard drive. But it can also be found sometimes in C:\Windows and C:\Windows\System32. Check your machines and see what version you have in any of the 4 places I have mentioned in this post. Just to make sure you get what I am saying, when you do the reinstall of Office, the registry entries get refreshed to look again at the correct version of mscorsvw.exe and maybe that is what is fixing the problem. I will have to investigate this while working today.

Oh, and before anyone says anything: This also ties in with the Graphics acceleration because according to the registry Direct3D also makes use of mscorsvw.exe. So, it would seem that Graphics Acceleration, DEP, and Office are all tied together by this .NET file mscorsvw.exe and it is known to have negative effects on at least Outlook if not other Office programs. This is definitely worth looking at.

**EDIT** Just ran a search of a machine that has Office crashed and one that is back up and fixed. The crashed one has several registry entries for Office15 that references mscorsvw.exe. On the machine that is fixed and running again there is not one reference to mscorsvw.exe in the registry that connects that file to Office. I do not know if this is an isolated incident or not. I will keep investigating. But if anyone out there has the means to do so, help me out and check any machine that is down and the ones that are working fine and let me know about any references to mscorsvw.exe in the registry. Like I said, it might be isolated and mean nothing, but it sure is one heck of a coincidence. Thanks for any help anybody can contribute. **END OF EDIT**

I wish I could speak with the engineers and go over all this with them. But alas, I am just considered an end-user and thus probably not worthy of being listened to even though I have been working on this from day one. Hopefully they will somehow look into this. It may be nothing, but it sure seems awful coincidental. Plus, when I was on the phone with them, they did say that it was something to do with registry entries. Maybe this is what they have been looking for, I don't know. But it is worth looking at.

WAHOOO TOOOO!!!    Yip back on line folowig the unbstall and reinstall suggestions...... thanks to all involved

The Fixit KB2827031 did nothing to assist - it had Office endlessly 'hanging' until I rebooted.

But  removing OFFICE with 015ctrremove.diagcab worked well and promptly acontext nd the reinstall was slow but easy as I have the Product Key -entered this on www.office/my account and then prompts steered me to a download Office online.  (hope this make sense in context of recent messages)

NO thanks to MS and its apparent disinterest in its Client base, mind you saying this I did get this solution from within their 'belly of information' only after your good detective work.

Cheers

Rick

Yes, that makes sense. It is one of the 3 or more different ways that I mentioned you could reinstall Office once you had it uninstalled. If you look back into my earlier posts you will see that it is listed as one of several methods for reinstallation.