How to debug random Outlook crashes (only happening with specific Add-in enabled)?

JakeDunn34

10/6/23, 8:31 AM

From a lot of our customers, we have been getting reports that Outlook unexpectedly crashes (complete process restart).

So far it has been impossible to reproduce, we can only analyze the logs after the fact and the only thing we know so far is that if we turn one specific add-in off, then the problem stops (it's a local add-in that helps sending e-mails with a configurable template). This add-in runs on .NET and is written in C#.

While the support team of this add-in has been very involved with us in trying to fix this issue, there is still no way to reproduce it and our clients are becoming impatient.

We have spent weeks gathering and analyzing logs and this is what we know / have tried:

The crash always reports an Event ID 1000 in the Event Log, which points the faulting module to kernelbase.dll / olmapi32.dll / wwlib.dll / ntll.dll
The problem still occurs after building a new Outlook profile, rebuilding OST file, cached mode on
There is no single way to reproduce, the crash sometimes happens when you're not even using Outlook
We have performed repairs of Office
We have upgraded Office to the latest build (their release notes mention a lot of fixes regarding unexpected crashes). It happens on Current Channel, Monthly Channel, Semi-Annual Channel..

We also ran SARA and WinDbg on the affected machines to find anything interesting there but nothing suspicious came up.

I have spent hours and hours on trying to reproduce it and have seen crashes here and there, but nothing points to a certain behaviour that causes it. I do feel it has something to do with certain objects / data inside Outlook that the add-in is not being able to touch a certain moment which isn't handled properly in the code, causing the crash. But so far all I (and the vendor) have are assumptions :/

Has anyone here ever experienced a similar problem and what ended up being the resolution?

Any tips to further debug this are more than welcome.

684

0 + 2

windows

outlook

.net

microsoft-office-365

djdomi

10/6/23, 10:30 AM

the vendor of the plugin has to do the job, not you.

joeqwerty

10/6/23, 12:25 PM

You're troubleshooting this from the Windows and Outlook side, but it's clear from your post that the add-in is causing the problem. Therefore the fix is to fix the add-in, which is a job for the vendor.

Elon Musk

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EN: How to debug random Outlook crashes (only happening with specific Add-in enabled)?

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