[SOLVED] Outlook 2010 crashes in usp10.dll when trying to display particular messages

[arkoenig]

Just installed Office 2010 on Windows XP SP3, and have a weird problem: Whenever I try to display particular messages, it crashes. For example, I subscribe to a Google Groups list named "The Bottom Line," which is aimed at bass players. It sends me messages as they appear and also sends a daily summary.

Whenever I try to display one of the daily summaries, Outlook crashes. It displays the individual messages just fine. Outlook 2007 displayed these messages just fine.

So far, every message that has caused a crash has come from a mailing list. However, at least two different mailing lists have generated messages that cause crashes.

Windows Event Viewer shows the failure as happening in usp10.dll, which is apparently part of the code for displaying international character sets in HTML files. Wikipedia says that usp10.doo is installed as part of Office. The crashes are always at the same place in usp10.dll.

The crashes also happen in safe mode, and they also happen with all add-ins disabled. Moreover, the same messages crash both my desktop and laptop machine, which suggest that the problem is not malware (unless somehow both machines were infected with malware that gives the same symptoms and has no other ill effects).

I tried completely uninstalling Office 2007 and 2010 and reinstalling Office 2010 from scratch; no difference in behavior.

I have sent information about this problem to Microsoft support, but while I wait to hear back from them, I wonder if anyone on this list has any suggestions.

[arkoenig]

I have found the problem! It appears that there is an incompatibility between the Adobe Type 1 Helvetica font and Office 2010. I do not know yet whether this is a problem with Office or a problem with the Adobe font, but uninstalling the font makes the problem go away and reinstalling it makes the problem come back.

I am pursuing the issue with Microsoft support and will report back with further details as I learn them.

[teddyf1]

Originally Posted by arkoenig

I have found the problem! It appears that there is an incompatibility between the Adobe Type 1 Helvetica font and Office 2010. I do not know yet whether this is a problem with Office or a problem with the Adobe font, but uninstalling the font makes the problem go away and reinstalling it makes the problem come back.

I am pursuing the issue with Microsoft support and will report back with further details as I learn them.

Did you get resolution to this problem from Microsoft? I too am having the EXACT same issue with the Helvetica Type 1 font and Office 2010.

[arkoenig]

Microsoft was able to reproduce the problem on their system, but they said that they won't do anything immediately because it involves a third-party product. They did say that they would put the problem in their internal bug-reporting system, and maybe something will happen in the fullness of time.

I also contacted Adobe. At first they said they would not help me because their database said that the serial number I gave them did not refer to the fonts I had purchased. When I sent them a copy of the original email that they sent to acknowlege my order for the fonts (back in 2003), they eventually sent the problem to one of their tech-support people. It took them a while to get back to me, but I did get email saying that they would look into it and reply to me by August 9.

[vinceanderson]

HOW ON EARTH DID YOU FIGURE THAT OUT!?!?!? lol

I've been wondering what it was for months. It would crash then I'd just read the message on my phone or something and ignore it for a while.

I've got 2 Windows 7 machines both running Office 2010 and the full Adobe Master Suite and it was happening on both of them.

Thank you for letting me know why!

[arkoenig]

Originally Posted by vinceanderson

HOW ON EARTH DID YOU FIGURE THAT OUT!?!?!? lol

I'm a patient, persistent troubleshooter :-)

Actually, I've been remiss, because I didn't post the follow-up: It turns out that if you have the full version of Adobe Type Manager, and run these fonts through it to rebuild the font metric files, the resulting files do not crash Office 2010. Unfortunately, I don't have that version of Adobe Type Manager, but I found someone at Adobe who does. He sent me new font metric files, which I was able to use.

I wasn't able to get permission to redistribute the files, but if you need them, you might describe the problem to Adobe and see if it is now in their knowledge base. If it isn't, please contact me via private message and I will point you in the direction of the person at Adobe who helped me out.

[CGunhouse]

I have a similar problem loading in some documents, I don't know exatly what it is in the document that causes it but in my situation it is usp10.dll that is the problem. When I go the error I pick "Debug" and looked at the assembler related to the error and the root cause is the ECX register being used to reference memory but the ECX register not being loaded. So whatever was in the ECX register from a previous use, which should be considered invalid, is used. Word 2010 throws a memory violation exception for the address pointed to by [ECX + 4].

The strange thing is that other people don't have the problems reading the file that I do, which leads me to think that there maybe a patch for usp10.dll.

Craig