Outlook 2016 still randomly crashes

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webshaun
Posts: 246
Joined: Wed May 25, 2005 8:37 pm
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Outlook 2016 still randomly crashes

Post by webshaun »

Getting pretty tired of all this. Outlook 2016 randomly crashes. It must happen when a new email arrives but there doesn't seem to be any other indications. The emails that seem to be coming in are standard, nothing unique about them.

The only way to get the system back up without resetting the email profile from control panel is to delete AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook\EasCache files and clear EAS sync data for that user from the ActiveSync server tool.

Please research this and fix ASAP. This has been going on for years now. It's unacceptable.
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Shaun Rieman
Advanced Micro Technologies, LLC

MailEnable-Ian
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Re: Outlook 2016 still randomly crashes

Post by MailEnable-Ian »

Hi,

The issue may not be related to new message arrivals. Just a coincidence that it crashes when a new one comes in because its most likely syncing the account and other folders, calendar events contacts etc at that time. The only way we are going to pin point the problem is to emulate on our end or analyse log data from your client machine and server. We use EAS Outlook on our end and it doesn't crash. Are you able to enable the Outlook troubleshooting logging in Outlook and and also enable EAS logging on the MailEnable server (just filter on your device ID for Outlook) and when the client crashes save the Outlook logs and server side logs and send to response@mailenable.com so we can troubleshoot further.

http://www.mailenable.com/kb/content/ar ... D=me020611
https://support.office.com/en-us/articl ... FFD4034AF5
Regards,

Ian Margarone
MailEnable Support

webshaun
Posts: 246
Joined: Wed May 25, 2005 8:37 pm
Location: NJ
Contact:

Re: Outlook 2016 still randomly crashes

Post by webshaun »

That's impossible since the logs build up so fast and whatever triggers the crash happens completely randomly. It could be days or months from now until it happens again.
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Shaun Rieman
Advanced Micro Technologies, LLC

webshaun
Posts: 246
Joined: Wed May 25, 2005 8:37 pm
Location: NJ
Contact:

Re: Outlook 2016 still randomly crashes

Post by webshaun »

It happened right when a calendar reminder popped up. I'll bet this has to do with calendar reminders because I lose them every time this happens. I lose all the calendar reminders that I had saved for later.
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Shaun Rieman
Advanced Micro Technologies, LLC

webshaun
Posts: 246
Joined: Wed May 25, 2005 8:37 pm
Location: NJ
Contact:

Re: Outlook 2016 still randomly crashes

Post by webshaun »

Either that or the daily junk email reports are triggering it. I noticed that it was a new item twice now after a crash.
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Shaun Rieman
Advanced Micro Technologies, LLC

webshaun
Posts: 246
Joined: Wed May 25, 2005 8:37 pm
Location: NJ
Contact:

Re: Outlook 2016 still randomly crashes

Post by webshaun »

Ok so I have 3 separate EAS accounts in outlook connected back to the mail server. I just noticed that two of the EasCache files are 0 bytes. It almost seems like they were deleted and it tried to start to pull them back in before it crashed, or during the crash.
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Shaun Rieman
Advanced Micro Technologies, LLC

MailEnable-Ian
Site Admin
Posts: 9738
Joined: Mon Mar 22, 2004 4:44 am
Location: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Re: Outlook 2016 still randomly crashes

Post by MailEnable-Ian »

Hi,
It happened right when a calendar reminder popped up. I'll bet this has to do with calendar reminders because I lose them every time this happens. I lose all the calendar reminders that I had saved for later.
Setup Outlook 2016 EAS on my end and created events with reminders to see if we are storing them on the server and results indicate we do. To ensure the reminder was retained I created a brand new profile and re synced the account and then checked the event and the reminder was synced.

If you are hitting the snooze button and changing the reminder for a later time then this is stored locally in the client. If you re sync the account and the calendar events are synced from the server to the client it will sync the reminder set in the index (original reminder value) and wont contain the reminder that you set when hitting the snooze button. Therefore this may explain why you don't see them because the original reminder that was set for the event occurs in the past and Outlook thinks one does not exist. This is how Outlook works and will exhibit the same behavior when connecting to Outlook.com and using the reminder snooze option.
Either that or the daily junk email reports are triggering it. I noticed that it was a new item twice now after a crash.
Do you mean the Junk email reporting agent in MailEnable?
Ok so I have 3 separate EAS accounts in outlook connected back to the mail server. I just noticed that two of the EasCache files are 0 bytes. It almost seems like they were deleted and it tried to start to pull them back in before it crashed, or during the crash.
Yes perhaps there was a problem where the sync keys were lost and the client needed to re sync the account. This should not happen and clearly there is a problem. But without the log files we requested earlier we don't know what the problem will be since we cannot emulate on our end.
Regards,

Ian Margarone
MailEnable Support

webshaun
Posts: 246
Joined: Wed May 25, 2005 8:37 pm
Location: NJ
Contact:

Re: Outlook 2016 still randomly crashes

Post by webshaun »

You're going to have to reimburse me for my time again if you want me to keep logs on. It's going to require me to check on this every day until this happens again. Are you guys willing to credit me for my time again to get this resolved once and for all?
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Shaun Rieman
Advanced Micro Technologies, LLC

MailEnable
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Re: Outlook 2016 still randomly crashes

Post by MailEnable »

Hi webshaun,

I would like to make MailEnable's position on this clear before I lock the thread. You have a support ticket open on this, and that is the most productive way to work through this issue.

As we have mentioned many times, the crash is occurring within Outlook within Microsoft owned code (which we do not have the ability to troubleshoot this code).

You seem very content in not accepting this. When an application crashes like this, it is the "fault" of the code that crashes. The code should protect against the crash (and it is not).

We are actively trying to find you a solution for you, but are under no obligation to pursue this further.
Your notion that we reimburse you for assisting in diagnosing is contrary to our good-will and is counter-productive in us helping you.
In this case the only connection point between Outlook and MailEnable is the ActiveSync Protocol (which we have reviewed and cannot find any issue).

Even if we were sending invalid data to Outlook (which we are reasonably sure we are not), then Outlook should protect against this.
The crashing we observe relate to issues with Microsoft's EAS client extension with relation to corrupting Outlook's EAS/PST message store.
From reviewing other forums, we do know that Outlook EAS has similar crashing problems even with Microsoft's own server platforms.

We are trying to be as helpful as we can with this issue - despite every piece of evidence suggesting that the crash is not in any code we control.

The amount of time we could spend on this is endless, because in all probability the issue causing the crash is beyond our control.
We are keen to help you find a solution, and will work with you, but it is important that you understand the principals behind us doing so.
Regards, Andrew

MailEnable
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Re: Outlook 2016 still randomly crashes

Post by MailEnable »

Hi Shaun,

I trust you had a great xmas break and new year. We posted a beta for 9.54 today at http://www.mailenable.com/beta/.

It includes two relevant fixes/improvements.

Firstly, there is a fix that will prevent outlook from crashing (and having it corrupt it's pst/ost).
In technical terms, the crash would occur if Outlook received a status code via ActiveSync advising that a change to the item could not be sent because it no longer exists on the server. Outlook seemingly does not like this status code and crashes. The condition could occur if a change was queued to the client (eg: a flag change, but the item was then immediately deleted). ie: It would require multiple clients to be connected to the mailbox, requesting and applying updates at the same time. We really hope this resolves the issue that you have been experiencing. We have a list of other misbehaviors that occur with Outlook as well, but this is the most significant. We have a relationship with Microsoft that allows us to send them such info and they will hopefully be able to update the client so it does not crash (but obviously we have prevented the crash by changing our response ActiveSync response).

Secondly, there are some significant speed improvements with respect to mailboxes with large folders (and for clients like Outlook that request large amounts of message data when they synchronize).

We expect to formally release these updates early next week, and when they are released, I am proposing that you apply them to determine if they address the crashing problem. We have been running the release on our production servers this week and have not experienced any misbehavior.

Regards, Andrew
Regards, Andrew

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