Microsoft Office 2003 document (Excel and Word), intermitently, takes 30 seconds to load

Question

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I am trying to figure out why a simple .XLS EXCEL workbook is taking, randomly, 30 seconds to open.

Before answering:

Please, bear mind the following:

Main symptoms

Using Windows Explorer, here is a more accurate sequence:

1. I double-click on an EmptyWorkbook.xls;
2. Nothing seems to happen;
3. Navigation on folder becames imediately unresponsive after the double-click;
4. After a delay between 30 seconds and 1 minute, window becames responsive and it starts a regular document loading, which after 1 second, present EXCEL splash screen e so on.
5. If, during hang, I stop printer spooler service, document is loaded immediately.

Other symptoms

• The problem consistently does not occur whenever Printer Spooler is stopped.
• Disabling network cable ceases problem;
• During hanging here is no cpu or disk activity;
• It only happens during document load. Every runs smooth after that;
• Windows Explorer.exe hangs on folder, but all other folders, system and applications are still responsive;
• There are no consecutive hangings. I have to wait for while to reproduce this behaviour;
• All samples documents are located on a local drive (C:\BPI);
• The document has has macros and have any addins usage;
• The problem does not occur on others files extensions like .PDF, for example;
• Office 2003 is being used for several years;
• The computer is running Windows XP;
• Computer has several network mapped drives, all addressed to main file server;
• Recently, main fileserver was replaced by Windows 2011 SBS Standard Edition

What I have done so far

• I have traced machine Explorer.exe, using Process Monitor, added Duration column, and filtered by Duration > 1. For further information, please refer to Oliver Salzburg tutorial.
• Using Process Monitor, I have also figured out than five operations were taking most of sample collecting duration. Looking at sample image below, column Operation below you will notice that one single operation was taking 29 seconds;
• I have tried different documents (.xls and .doc), all of them smaller than 30 KB;
• I have, temporarily, removed all shortcuts on User Document's folder that were pointing to network drives or shares;
• I have runned CCleaner to fix registry issues;
• I made sure that there were no external links on tested workbook or word documents;
• I have checked if %PATH% was referencing any mapped network driver;
• I have reproduced this behaviour for hours;
• I have extensivelly researched for hours on the web;

Answer 1

Like Pynner suggested, I bet it has something to do with the time-out to access network-shared folders, which are for some reasons unavailable.

Try to disable all network interfaces and then try to reproduce the problem again. If I am right, there will be no delay this time, as all network related operations will fail immediately.

Answer 2

Don't forget a shared Printer can easily cause the exact same issue. Happened to me on my MS Word 2003 whenever that shared network printer was turned off.

Answer 3

This sounds very much like it is scanning for a missing network resource, such as an intermittent Network Share that happens to be in the search path, or a security access authorization lookup, etc. (there are many possibilities).

Here is a blog article by the creator of both Process Explorer and Process Monitor (Mark Russinovich) explaining how he diagnosed a very similar problem: http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2005/08/28/the-case-of-the-intermittent-and-annoying-explorer-hangs.aspx.

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I have to point out that I have been afflicted with the notorious "30-second Explorer Hang" more than once, and almost every single time it turned out to be some obscure UNC reference to a sever that either no longer existed or that was not accessible at that time. I'd suggest that you try search your registry for "\" and make sure that all of the occurrences you find are to servers that actually exist.

Answer 4

YES!!! Finnaly, after almost a week of really painfull research, I have found the culprit: a local installed network printer driver.

Today, I have found a consistent way reproducing the problem. After noticing that it ceased whenever I stopped Printer Spooler service. After some trial and error, a thought came to my mind:

"What if the problem only arises when someone else create a printer job?"

"May be sending a printer test page and, imediately, double-clicking my EmptySample.xls may cause the hanging behaviour?"

Lucky (?) me, on first attempt, Windows Explorer imediatly froze! Full of joy, I have replicated the experience a couple more times and Yes!. Almost one week later, I was able to consistently reproduce the freezing/hanging/lack of responsivenesss or what we may call it!

I have also noted that some installed printers were using a direct port and some where server shared printers. Reproducing the experience on server shared printers was okay. So, as far as I know, this issue only afects local installed network printer drivers.

That explains why:

• It was intermittent. Because it only happened whenever someonelse sender a document to printer;
• It only happended during regular work hours. After 6 p.m. almost everybody has leaved the building. So, there no one to triger print jobs;
• It dit not occurs whenever network cable was disconnected;
• Windows Explorer resumed regular document load imediately whenever I stopped Printer Spooler Service.

Even though, from now on, I will consider this a closed case, I will update this answer whenever there are new findings, specially, present you guys some Process Monitor's collected data that, in the paste few days, where pointing to Printer Spooler Services - I just was not prepared to understand the provided clues. I will work on that.

For whom whoever followed comments or revisions to this question, please, forgive me for doing so many updates, but I really think that keeping you updated was important.

Thanks a lot to everyone!!!