Libreoffice freezes after loading on windows 8.1

[ucsfca]

Starting on 2014-09-08, my copy of Libreoffice 4.1.1.2 stopped doing anything useful. When either running the program directly or trying to open a Libreoffice document, the program will slowly load, then show the document, but be completely frozen. In this state it is impossible to select anything in the document, place the cursor, activate a button, open a menu, or even move or close the window. Yesterday, I was able to get it to work briefly using the ‘repair’ option in the installer, but today that had no affect. I’ve also tried deleting the Libreoffice information from Apps\Roaming, uninstalling and reinstalling, and upgrading to the 4.3 version with no success.

Has anyone had a similar problem and had any luck repairing it? Does anyone know what could cause this?

[ucsfca]

I got Libreoffice working again. In case anyone else has the same problem and finds this, it was a Java issue. I’m pretty sure a Java update caused the problem.

After I first ran the ‘repair’ option, I saw a dialog box telling me to restart the computer. Naturally, I ignored it and tested Libreoffice, which is when it worked. Only after restarting did it become non-functional again. Once I realized that, I looked at the system PATH variable, which now started with a path added by Libreoffice. Removing this path and restarting solves the problem.

I looked at what was in Libreoffice’s priority 1 super-important directory, and found links to three java executables (and no DLLs or anything else). I’m guessing this means the system was trying to use the Libreoffice executables along with the DLLs from a different java installation in system32. In conclusion, Libreoffice really needs to check whether there’s an existing copy of Java on the system path before adding a new one, never add anything to the beginning of the system PATH variable, and never use the path to a folder with a couple of links rather than a folder where something is really installed. I would expect all three of those to be normal good programming practice, and any one of them would have prevented this issue.