Office Home & Business 2021 Click-To-Run Apps Won’t Start

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[Travasaurus]

This is a 1st for me. Dell XPS desktop with i7 CPU & 32GB of RAM running Windows 11 Pro version 21H2. Installed Office Home & Business 2021 “click-to-run” a month or so ago and it worked like a charm. A few days ago my customer said he “thought” there was a Windows update (which may or may not have happened) and suddenly Word & Outlook quit working, along with all the other Office apps (Excel, PowerPoint, etc) as well. (All Windows Pro updates are current, of course) I ran him through all the usual troubleshooting procedures but to no avail. Went out there today and initially did the “fix-it routine” both the “Quick Repair” and the “Online Repair” options in Control Panel / Programs & Features; no bueno. Then I used Revo Uninstaller to do a complete uninstall and downloaded the “Offline Installer” from the Office website and did another from-scratch install. No luck. Then I downloaded and used the Microsoft Support & Recovery Assistant to do a thorough uninstall (not like Revo Uninstaller hadn’t just essentially done the identical thing); same result. Needless to say I tried to start Word in “safe mode” and later Windows itself in Safe Mode. When in “standard mode” I only get a quick rotating circle and then nothing; no error messages whatsoever. In Windows Safe Mode I get a small box saying “Something Went Wrong. We couldn’t start your program. Please try starting it again. If it won’t start try repairing Office from ‘Programs and Features’ in the Control Panel. Error Code 0x426-0x0”. Following the Error Code troubleshooting instructions it directs me to do what I’ve already done multiple times now. By sheer coincidence a Dell tech was out for a call on another computer & I demonstrated the problem; he said he’d never seen nor heard of it before. Every other program works like a charm except for those in Office; not one MS Office 2021 program will start. Any suggestions are welcome before I have to do a bare-metal reinstall of Windows. No rhyme or reason here, but something is “suppressing” all of the Office apps. Update: Forgot to mention that I’ve done both the DISM and the SFC routines; neither found any file errors.

• This topic was modified 2 years, 6 months ago by Travasaurus. Reason: Provide additional information

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I’d suggest maybe try a new user account 1st. Had a weird one this week where photos app wouldn’t run. Repair, reset, uninstall, uninstall all-users multiple times. Nothing worked. Logged into another user account, uninstalled and reinstalled and it worked. Back to the original user and it now was working.

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Travasaurus

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Added new account with Administrator privileges. Same thing; no Office apps will start but everything else runs just fine. Quick rotating circle and then nothing. Looks like a (painful) bare-metal re-install is in order. This is just crazy…

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Which antivirus is in play? Tried disabling it?

How to get rid of Microsoft Office error code 0x426-0x0?

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windbg, Travasaurus

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Make sure the ClickToRunSvc Windows service is running, before starting any click-to-run Office app. Aka “Microsoft Office Click-to-Run Service” in Services.

Windows 10 22H2 desktops & laptops on Dell, HP, ASUS; No servers, no domain.

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Travasaurus

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Click-to-run service is running and is set to “Automatic”. No luck with that, unfortunately.

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Hi Travasaurus:

Any chance that CCleaner is installed on this computer? There are CCleaner users currently reporting a similar problem in Paul SEPA’s 21-Sep-2021 CCleaner 6.04.10044 Prevents All MS Office Apps From Running that was posted in the CCleaner Bug Reporting board.

I originally assumed their issue was caused by over-aggressive disk cleaning that was removing a MS Office shortcut or disk file but one of the users posting in that thread is sure that CCleaner v6.04 (rel. 20-Sep-2022) can prevent the executables of MS Office 2019 Click-to-Run from launching correctly.  If CCleaner is actually the cause then it’s possible that MS Office 2021 Click-to-Run is also affected
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Dell Inspiron 5584 *64-bit Win 10 Pro v21H2 build 19044.2006 * Firefox v105.0.3 * Microsoft Defender v4.18.2207.7-1.1.19600.3 * Malwarebytes Premium v4.5.14.210-1.0.1772 * MS Office 2019 Home & Business Version 2209 Build 15629.20156 (Click-to-Run)

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windbg, Travasaurus

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Is the “fix” the to uninstall the program? Again, I have the CCleaner Pro (paid) versions all of my computers and this is the only one that is acting up and refusing to start any Office apps on this machine. I had not heard about this particular glitch previously…

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Travasaurus wrote:

Is the “fix” the to uninstall the program? Again, I have the CCleaner Pro (paid) versions all of my computers and this is the only one that is acting up

Hi Travasaurus:

I honestly don’t know since I can’t reproduce the problem, but as I noted Paul SEPA’s thread I use a bare-bones edition of CCleaner Free Portable v6.04 (i.e., I delete all executables except CCleaner64.exe after unzipping the csetupxxx.zip file) that is run from a removable USB thumb drive, so CCleaner isn’t actually installed on my system.  I only use CCleaner to run a Custom Clean scan that is configured to perform basic cleaning of temp files, etc. but doesn’t touch any of my MS Office files.  That means that PC Health Check and CCleaner Pro features like Performance Optimizer, Software Updater, Driver Updater, etc. can’t run on my system.  However, I did post a link in Paul SEPA’s thread to scoobydog’s 16-Jul-2019 Office 16/Office 365 Potential Issues with CCleaner that shows that CCleaner has caused issues with MS Office in the past.

The only way you could tell if CCleaner is causing a conflict is to uninstall the program and see if your MS Office 2021 programs launch correctly. If that doesn’t fix the problem then b’s suggestion in post #2486718 to look for a possible conflict with the real-time protection of the antivirus or firewall would be the next thing I’d check. If there is a VPN on this computer then I’d also check if disabling the VPN allows MS Office 2021 to run correctly.
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Dell Inspiron 5584 *64-bit Win 10 Pro v21H2 build 19044.2006 * Firefox v105.0.3 * Microsoft Defender v4.18.2207.7-1.1.19600.3 * Malwarebytes Premium v4.5.14.210-1.0.1772 * MS Office 2019 Home & Business Version 2209 Build 15629.20156 (Click-to-Run) * CCleaner Free Portable v6.04.10044

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Travasaurus

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lmacri wrote:

The only way you could tell if CCleaner is causing a conflict is to uninstall the program and see if your MS Office 2021 programs launch correctly.

Hi Travasaurus:

One other thought. When a CCleaner / MS Office conflict was originally reported back in July 2019 in scoobydog’s Office 16/Office 365 Potential Issues With CCleaner user Picky Number 1 posted <here> that updating (or disabling) their OneDrive app solved the problem.

I don’t know if it’s relevant, but Bert Klaver just posted on 08-Oct-2021 in the CCleaner forum thread Google Drive is Always Disabled at Startup of My PC that they recently upgraded to CCleaner Pro Plus and Google Drive is now being disabled at startup. At this point I don’t know if CCleaner Pro v6.04 is actually preventing Google Drive from establishing a connection to the OP Bert Klaver’s computer, but if your problem computer uses any sort of cloud backup like OneDrive or Google Drive or saves MS Office 2021 files (e.g., .docx, .xlsx, etc.) to the cloud you might want to ensure the app for the cloud service is updated and connecting properly at boot-up.
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Dell Inspiron 5584 *64-bit Win 10 Pro v21H2 build 19044.2006 * Firefox v105.0.3 * Microsoft Defender v4.18.2207.7-1.1.19600.3 * Malwarebytes Premium v4.5.14.210-1.0.1772 * MS Office 2019 Home & Business Version 2209 Build 15629.20156 (Click-to-Run) * CCleaner Free Portable v6.04.10044

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YES, CCleaner was causing all my problems with Excel and Word not opening. After I uninstalled it, they both worked correctly.

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lmacri wrote:

Any chance that CCleaner is installed on this computer? There are CCleaner users currently reporting a similar problem in Paul SEPA’s 21-Sep-2021 CCleaner 6.04.10044 Prevents All MS Office Apps From Running that was posted in the CCleaner Bug Reporting board.

Hi Travasuarus:

Just following up with further details.  Please see recent posts in tgrue2’s 08-Nov-2022 topic Microsoft Office 365 Stopped Working in the CCleaner Bug Reporting board for an update. Current speculation is that the Performance Optimizer feature of CCleaner Pro is adding “debugger” subkeys in the Windows registry that can prevent various programs (e.g., Microsoft Office / Microsoft 365, Macrium Reflect, Adobe Acrobat Reader, etc.) from launching correctly on some systems.

I don’t know if this is the root cause of the MS Office Home & Business 2021 C2R problems on your Dell XPS desktop / Win 11 machine, but I’m guessing I’m not affected because my CCleaner Free Portable v6.07 (thankfully) does not include Performance Optimizer and some of the other bloat that is included with CCleaner Pro.  I also haven’t upgraded to Win 11 yet, and I don’t allow Dell SupportAssist v3.13.0 to load at boot-up and run in real-time (I occasionally run Dell Update for Windows Universal v4.7.1 to check for available Dell software and drivers), although I currently have no idea if Win 11 and/or Dell SupportAssist contributes to the problem in any way.
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Dell Inspiron 5584 * 64-bit Win 10 Pro v22H2 build 19045.2364 * Firefox v108.0.2 * Microsoft Defender v4.18.2211.5-1.1.19900.2 * Malwarebytes Premium v4.5.19.229-1.0.1860 * Macrium Reflect Free v8.0.7175 * MS Office Home and Business 2019 Click-to-Run (Version 2211 / Build 15831.20208) * CCleaner Free Portable v6.07.10191

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Installing Office Home and Business 2021, non of the apps are loaded to my local pc.  Clearing previous version of Office 2016 and reloaded, with no errors.  I have only 190 apps on my pc.

Any suggestions would help

 

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