Excel 2003 Persistent Errors in vbe6.dll - Make It Stop!

[SidBord]

I run a system of 35 Excel 2003 workbooks to process financial data on my Dell 8300 computer, which runs Win XP Pro. These workbooks have been running for at least 2 years. 9 days ago I sudenly started having crashes which the Event Viewer says were caused by "vbe6.dll".
For those 9 days I have averaged 8 crashes a day. I run Spybot, Ad-aware, Norton Internet Secuity (and AntiVirus). Other than a few cookies with spyware, they haven't turned up anything. I ran Excel's Detect & Repair facility, but it didn't rreport anything.
Usually I have the crash when I first start using the workbook. My workbooks are heavily "linked" to other workbooks in the system. I use a LOT of conditional formatting. I use a LOT of VBA macros to do the main processing. And for some of the workbooks I do event processing in Worksheet_Change mostly, but some in WOrkbook_Open. I've had no problems with the event processing in the past. About two weeks ago, in response oto one of my crashes,, I got a message from Microsoft saying that I should inistall Office 2003 SP1. I did. No healp.
I have some other problems with workbook "locked for editing", and a scan of the Microsoft Knowledge Base said to install the UPHClean utility, which should put a stop to that. I did. It didn't.
It seems to me that I tend to have more crashes in workbooks that use event processing, but it also occurs in some that do not. I have essentially turned off all event processing to eliminate that as a factor. I thought it would help. It didn't.
Many timies after a crash recovery, I ask what repairs were done, and the reply is "No errors were detected. No repairs were necessary". At that point I often execute the main processing macro step by step just to get thru, and the processing goes to completion. Subsequently oft times I can run a crashed workbook without doing anything special to get it to run. But then the next day that same workbook will crash when I least expect it to. One day recently, I had a large workbook filled with text reference material . . . no formulas . . . no event processing. I opened it up and it was completely demolished by the recovery proess. All data was lost. Event Viewer says it was vbe6.dll that caused the crash.
As it stands, Excel 2003 has become nearly useless to me, and I can't get help from Microsoft because I had Office 11 installed by Dell when I bought the new computer. Dell support is useless when it comes to software. So if ANYONE has any ideas (ior even heard of vbe6.dll), I'm llistening. (Mona)

 

[rickolh]

Not sure If I'm right, but VBA will create lots of windows temp files in your temp folder and as time goes by accumulatation will cause slow startup to excel and sometimes crashes, I suggest clearing the temp folder to see if it helps.

 

[SidBord]

I'm aware of that, and I clear out my "internet temps" almost every day. Just which temp file are you referring to? I didn't know VBA loaded stuff in too. I have temp folders everywhere it seems. Is there a special one for VBA? Apparently vbe6.dll IS associated with VBA somehow (as one might guess from the name). I've alsready had 4 crashes this morning that I didn't expect.
Thanx for the reply!

 

[Ivan F Moala]

The Temp Dir for XP is usually

C:\Documents and Settings\YOURNAME\Temp

where YOURNAME = your logon username

If not sure then run this code;

Option Explicit

Private Declare Function GetTempPath _
    Lib "kernel32" _
        Alias "GetTempPathA" ( _
            ByVal nBufferLength As Long, _
            ByVal lpBuffer As String) _
As Long

Sub TempPath()
Dim strTemp As String

    '// Create a buffer
    strTemp = String(256, Chr(0))
    '// Get the temporary path
    GetTempPath 256, strTemp
    '// Strip the rest of the buffer
    strTemp = Left(strTemp, InStr(strTemp, Chr(0)) - 1)
    MsgBox strTemp

End Sub

Try cleaning out your Temp files. If still no go then

1) What has change, or what have you done that is diff over the last 9 days ? Try removing anything your have installed over this period.

Try these steps (via Mark Henry)

1. try excel in safe mode (Start|Run 'excel /s' does the problem go away. If so, it's simple configuration files interfering with Excel.

2. what version/os? I need this just so I know how to ask the customer to do stuff.

3. are the menu configuration files corrupt? To find out, search for *.XLB and delete them. Try excel in normal mode. If it works I'll ask if the customer installed Adobe or Palm software which may have corrupted our menus when they tried to put their icon on our toolbar.

4. are the toolbar cofiguration files corrupted? search for *.pip files for excel and only remove the excel ones. check software again.

5. check the addins and alternate startup folders for files that may be starting with Excel and blowing it out. Remove them and test.

6. check the xlstart folders and make sure nothings loading that's causing the problem.

7. Delete the correct registry key for this version of Excel and let the installer re-initialize them. (And I definitely need to make sure the customer is with me on this one for obvious reasons.)

8. If safe mode didn't correct the problem way back at step 1, I'll need to try it in OS safe mode. This knocks out services and background apps that can crash Excel. We know of many and there's new ones popping up from time to time. This also breaks the network connection which is also the source of all sorts of problems opening files and starting Excel.

9. If this didn't work, we might try a repair installation of Excel. I'd be starting to make subtle checks for telltale signs of viruses on the customer's system without panicing them. Also, I'd be looking for previous installation remanents that may be messing the current version up.

10. Next, I'd be looking at video and print drivers. Did the user install a new printer? Those all in one types are constantly causing us grief. Now I've got to do some damage control because often their drivers aren't compatible with XP for example. I might try a different printer driver. (I know this seems weird to some but here's the reason--Excel is actually a raster graphics program as opposed to say Word which uses vector graphics. The printer driver is crucial to the display of the spreadsheet. The video driver can also come into play but not as often.)

11. At this point I'm smoozing the customer really good because they are getting pretty frustrated and I've got to keep them on track and working toward the goal. This requires quite a bit of diplomacy on my part and I can say with certainty that we earn our $35 per incident charge (if they've already used up their two free incidents that is). I may also, conference in HP or one of our OS support people for assistance with selective startups or troubles that appear to be OS related.

12. OK, so if I still haven't found the solution, I escalate this to a person that will continue work the case to resolution.

HTH

 

[SidBord]

Migaawd, Ivan...what a great reply. I'll print it out and go through the list. Today I had a series of creahes in a simple workbook. I did a step-by-step progress through it, and determined that for some odd reason it was blowing up when it tried to access a macro in Personal.xls that was referenced by the main macro in the workbook. This particular workbook has had few crashes in the past. So I modified the code a bit topass the reference to Personnal, and I was able to get it to run all the way through. Now here's the annoying thing...when I removed the code change in my macro so that it had to go to Personal, IT DID! I ran it several times after that and it worked perfectly. I've noticed that on some of the other crashes, excelpt I hadn't establkished a connection with a reference to Personal. Incidentally, I have MANY macros that reference (Call) other macros I have resident in Personal, so that has NEVER been a problem in the past. Why it wouldn't work one time, then a few minutes later it worked fine is confounding.