Libre office continual fatal crashes with Mullvad VPN activated

[SuperPigDots]

I have noticed that, for a few months now, every Libre Office application (writer, calc, etc.) has produced a repeatable and specific fatal rpogram crash in regard to use of my VPN.

When I have my VPN activated and I try to open a new document of any type or an existing document of any type in Libre Office program, the document will not load, a gray screen will show, the program will freeze, and I will get a Windows warning of the program being unresponsive after just a few seconds. If I am lucky, I can close Libre Office, turn off my VPN, and then relaunch Libre Office. If I am unlucky, Libre Office will still crash at this point and the only fix I have found is to do a system reboot followed by turning off my VPN (before initially launching Libre Office and after the system reboot).

I am using the most updated versions of Windows 11, Mullvad VPN, and Libre Office. This crash has been happening now over multiple LIbre Office updates.

I find it strange that LIbre Office behaves this way, indicating to me that it is always connecting to the web in some sort of way when launched. To make things even more strange, I went and excluded every .exe file in C:\Program Files\LibreOffice\program and the fatal crash still occurs.

[mikekaganski]

First of all, the actual binary executable that needs exclusion (if at all) is not an .exe, but soffice.bin - please try this.
But also note tdf#42673, i.e.: LibreOffice may query the printer configured for a given document (either using printer configuration stored in the document itself, or system default) - so if that printer happens to be a network printer, there may be some system printer driver communication over network, which could need addressing maybe.

[SuperPigDots]

Thank you so much for this! I was able to find the solution through the reference that you gave to me. Still, it appears this is a long-term and ongoing issue for Libre Office when default Windows drivers for printers are installed (most common) instead of the printer branded drivers.

I have also noticed that this help forum login is broken when my VPN is turned on. It would seem that Libre Office as an entity just isn’t well-equipped to work with a VPN active in the background in general.

[erAck]

From that I’d rather draw the conclusion that your VPN is broken, because this “forum” Ask site login and LibreOffice application are entirely independent things.

[SuperPigDots]

I can guarantee my VPN is not broken. But that is correct, if Ask is the facilitator of this forum, then it would seem that both Libre and Ask don’t play well with VPNs. Libre has a major glitch when Windows printer drivers are installed and the printer is off of the network (which a VPN triggers unless local network sharing is activated i.e. printers can wirelessly connect). Ask login doesn’t work with a VPN activated (but curiously does work with a VPN once logged in). The two issues would seem unrelated and not facilitated by the same entity.