92113 - Macintosh will freeze when menu is selected in MS Office

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Core :: XUL, defect)

Description

[Not interested in Mozilla any more]

If I run office 98 or 2001 at the same time as Mozilla then clicking on menus
will sometimes freeze the entire machine. The freeze is total, nothing will
break you out of it. The mouse locks, the machine stops responding and not even
force quit will work.

I've seen this problem with all builds of Mozilla from M9 through to the latest
0.9.2 nightly build as well as Netscape 4.x. It happens when using either Office
98 or 2001. It is pressent on G3's an G4's and has been seen on MacOS 8.x and
9.x. It has been observed on 8 to 10 different machines.

A major problem is that it is not always reproducable! However, the sequence is
as follows:

1) Start Mozilla and open the mail window.
2) Start any office app such as Word, Excel or Powerpoint.
3) Working in word type a few things and at some point you will
   need to click on the menus. At this point the freeze will occur.

It appears has a striking similarity to the Mercutio MDEF problem.
One setting worth mentioning is that I've got the IMAP server set
to check for new mail periodically.

I list this issue here as there is no problem at all using Office
98 and 2001 when Mozilla is not running.

Comment 1

[timeless]

yuck

Comment 2

[Mike Pinkerton (not reading bugmail)]

if it happens with 4.x, it sounds like msft's bug with non-standard MDEFs.

Comment 3

[Not interested in Mozilla any more]

But it only happens in the pressence of 4.x or Mozilla. If these are not running
then nothing ever goes wrong. At best it sounds like an incompatability with
Office and Moz/4.x. Is mozilla still using the Mercutio MDEF? If so there was a
problem with that a long while ago that caused a similar problem.

Comment 4

[Mike Pinkerton (not reading bugmail)]

mozilla and 4.x share no code. they both happen to use non-standard mdef's and 
that will never change. it's msft's bug.

Comment 5

[Steve Dagley]

Mozilla doesn't use Mercutio.  And while Communicator 4.x never updated to the 
Platinum aware version of Mercutio (it broke a feature we were using to indent 
menu items) the version we do use has been patched to eliminate the improper 
unlocking of a graphics device which was the crasher bug in Mercutio.  We made 
this change around Navigator 4.0.4.1 as I recall.

One thing I would suggest trying is removing MOM (Microsoft Office Manager) if it 
is installed and seeing if the crash goes away.

Comment 6

[Not interested in Mozilla any more]

We never had office manager installed, it used to crash the system.
If it's a MS thing why does it only happen when Moz or NC4.x is pressent
in memory?