Value cannot be Null, e1 or el

[yeswork]

Hi,

Have been using RC 6.5 3693 on Vista running 24x7 with no problems until last week.

Now X1 opens, shows user interface, says loading index, then shuts down the UI immediately. An error dialog box opens and says "Value cannot be Null" and either e1 or el. The error dialog displays for less than a second and then disappears, the whole opening of X1, closing of UI, flash/display of error message takes less than 5 seconds.

I have uninstalled and reinstalled. After fresh reinstall, X1 works fine for a while - I believe while it is creating the new index. After an overnight, X1 then misbehaves, it opens and shuts down. Reboot, X1 still opens and shuts down immediately. Can only get it to work again by reinstall (blowing away index)

Only changes to system were Microsoft update to .Net 3.5 latest patch last week.

Any log files I can look at? Any other suggestions?

[Kenward]

Can't help much beyond saying that I also installed the .NET update and it caused no problems.

[yeswork]

Using the X1 Dx tool. LogID: 359230348
Version: 3693 Date: 2/09/2009 11:32:44 AM
X1UI: 00B81000
X1Lib: 1F001000
Value cannot be null.
Parameter name: el
Exception Address: 00000000
Stack:
User Email:
User description:

UI Stack Trace:
at System.Windows.Automation.Provider.AutomationInteropProvider.ReturnRawElementProvider(IntPtr hwnd, IntPtr wParam, IntPtr lParam, IRawElementProviderSimple el)
at System.Windows.Forms.Integration.WindowsFormsHost.OnWmGetObject(IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam)
at System.Windows.Forms.Integration.WindowsFormsHost.WndProc(IntPtr hwnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wParam, IntPtr lParam, Boolean& handled)
at System.Windows.Interop.HwndHost.SubclassWndProc(IntPtr hwnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wParam, IntPtr lParam, Boolean& handled)
at MS.Win32.HwndSubclass.DispatcherCallbackOperation(Object o)
at System.Windows.Threading.ExceptionWrapper.InternalRealCall(Delegate callback, Object args, Boolean isSingleParameter)
at System.Windows.Threading.ExceptionWrapper.TryCatchWhen(Object source, Delegate callback, Object args, Boolean isSingleParameter, Delegate catchHandler)
---End description
-------- Specs --------
Windows Vista or Longhorn Workstation Service Pack: SP1
AMD AMD Phenom(tm) 9600 Quad-Core Processor 2300MHz
72 processes active
Virtual Memory: 1722M Free / 2048M Total
Physical Memory: 1671M Free / 2048M Total
Data drive: 64287M Free / 70134M Total
Outlook Version: 12.0.6316.5000
MAPI DLL: mapi32.dll (actual: OLMAPI32.DLL); Version: 12.0.6315.5000
-------- INI File --------
INI file information is suppressed

[yeswork]

Hi,

This is an update to my X1 crashing.

I got some nice technical support from X1. Sent off the crash reports - seemed like X1 was indexing and then something caused the EMAIL index to not get loaded into the UI. A change of the x1config.ini to force the file index to load in the UI got X1 running.

The "fix" was to repair my outlook.pst post office file. I used scanpst.exe and repaired mu pst file. Now X1 is running fine.

I am happy. However, thie is again an example of X1 not failing gracefully. I believe that a bad/corrupted PST file should not crash X1 (or its UI). Another example, if the X1 folder containing the index is missing (say on a remote drive that fails to mount) X1 crashes hard. X1 must be removed/reinstalled to point to a new index location.

Hope this helps someone else.

[Kenward]

Well spotted. Broken PST files are a fact of life with Outlook. Whenever problems crop up, one of the first suggestions is to run scanpst.

The problem is that Outlook itself seems to be happy to live with broken PST files. And there are few suggestions as to why the thing breaks in the first place.

I have come to the conclusion that we should all run scanpst ever week or so to prevent these problems from happening.

[mprachar]

Does anybody know if ost files are just as susceptible to this issue?

[Kenward]

Don't they get recreated on a regular basis? I can't recall seeing any reference here to broken OST files. Exchange seems to come with its own set of issues.

Having said that, Microsoft provides a "scanost" tool. So they must think that these files need some attention.

[tjh]

I've used the ScanOST tool many times and never once did it find anything.

ScanPST on the other hand, I suggest running that once a week!

[Kenward]

Good feedback on OSTs. Thanks.

I agree about the weekly dose of scanpst.

It would be nice to be able to automate the process. I don't know that the thing has the command line options that you would need for that.