Available resources unusual error - please help!

[cfoderick]

[I HAVE READ OTHER THREADS ON THIS FORUM, WITH THE SAME ISSUE, AND NONE ARE LIKE THIS]

I have a user that is having an issue that no one has been able to solve for some time. I have done EVERY troubleshooting idea I have found, with no success. I have given up and seeking help from the experts! This is the exact error message:

"Excel cannot complete this task with available resources. Choose less data or close other applications."

This file she is opening is quite small (300kb), and everyone else in her group can access these files in the same way with no issues. She has a basic company build with nothing fancy on it, literally identical to other peoples machines nearby. This error doesn't happen all of the time either. It is very random. This will happen with any files she opens too.

Here is a list of what the user is using:

OS - Windows 7 64-bit / On a domain
Hardware - Dell Optiplex 790 DT
Software - MS Office Professional Plus 2007, Symantec Endpoint Protection 12.1, MS Lync 2010, iSeries V6 R1M0, Java 6u17 (all are company standard stuff, nothing extra)

Here is a list of all the troubleshooting I have done to try to beat this issue:

1. Reinstalled office 2007
2. Started in safe mode (error still occurs / still went through other steps though)
3. Renamed Excel.xlb to Excel.xlb.old
4. Checked task manager for other processes running
5. Disabled excel muti-threading
6. Disabled hyper-threading in bios

Any help trying to figure this out would help me and future me's. This issue is annoying and won't seem to go away

Thank you for any assistance; ask any questions and I will reply back quickly with as much detail as I can share.

 

[cfoderick]

Anything yet?

 

[bobsan42]

I think you should share more about the procedure that brings up the issue - is it VBA or some Excel operations or whatever. When does the problem appear? Any workbook or a specific one?
Maybe also parts of the relevant code if it is a code. Or share the workbook that makes it happen.
What about the system resources and processes at the time? Anything to cast some more light on the issue.

 

[cfoderick]

1. The problem arises over tons of different workbooks not just one specifically.
2. It will happen when the user double clicks to open a workbook, the error will popup, and won't be able to open the document until the user restarts excel. Take note that the user has also been getting a lot of excel has stopped working messages too. The user simply just stops it, closes it down, the reopens it.
3. I have never had to divulge into the code before, simply because everything is so generalized here.
4. I can look again when the error occurs but I didn't see anything unusual at the time. Unusual being extra excel processes.

Personally, even though I don't know excel very well, shouldn't a clean install of Office fix this issue if it was code related? My clean install didn't change anything.

 

[bobsan42]

For me this sounds like a problem with the system. Could be basically anything. Connectivity, settings, startup files (system or excel), connections with other applications, missing patches and updates, something different on the particular PC configuratoin or installed software, (in)compatibility settings, memory allocation and availability, 32-bit Office on a 64 bit machine, hardware problems, memory corruption, shadow settings, OS settings ...

First maybe try to figure out if it's a hardware or software issue - mybe swap hard-drives and see what happens.
If it is software - try to figure out the differences between two systems.

Whatever one tries - i have never seen two completely identical configurations - especially at software level.

 

[cfoderick]

I swapped out the hdd to see how that turns out. If I can narrow it down to the hardware that would be great. Right now I'm thinking either the BIOS version (because they are different) or the motherboard are the issue. I will keep you posted as to what I find

 

[cfoderick]

After swapping her drive into an identical system, the user reported that the issue still remains. So I suppose hardware is out of the picture. The other board has an original BIOS on it too, so both seem to be no bueno.