LibreOffice v7.3 crash on launch with clean install

ket · March 8, 2022, 6:51pm

As title says, clean install, and on both my laptop (Win10 64bit, i3 2350M) and PC (Win10 64bit, Ryzen 3700X) LibreOffice crashes on the splash screen and stays there until I terminate the process. LibreOffice 7.2.5 works flawlessly. Ideas anyone?

EDIT: Just to consolidate information LO v7.3 is crashing when attempting to launch it not just on a clean install of it but an entirely clean OS install with nothing copied or restored to AppData > Roaming. The LO folder there is as clean as it gets, its literally just what LO and/or the installer places there and I’ve even tried the grant admin full control context menu trick as well as trying to start LO with elevated admin rights. The only odd thing I found in trying to troubleshoot this is that LO spat an error at me when trying to open word without elevated rights just telling me it needed elevated rights to run, when attempting to run word as admin… you guessed it, crash. Why on earth would a word processing suit absolutely need elevated rights to launch anyway? Very strange, and suspicious to be perfectly honest.

A few of the systems I’vetried running LibreOffice v7.3 on;

Ryzen 7 3700X, Radeon 6800XT, 32GB 3600MHz RAM, X570 Tomahawk, Win10 Pro x64 - Launches, then almost immediately CTDs with no error. v7.2.5 seems to be fine.

Ryzen 3 4300U, integrated Radeon Graphics, 8GB RAM, Win10 Home x64 - Seems to work fine

Intel 2350M, intel HD3000 graphics, 8GB RAM, Win10 Pro x64 - Crashes when attempting to launch, same happens with 7.2.5 and 7.1.8.

ket · March 13, 2022, 6:32pm

FINAL VERDICT: It’s OGL causing problems with AMD GPUs on modern systems and older intel IGPs on modern OSes. All problems are being caused by that hardware acceleration, there’s no config file you can dive in to directly edit you have to launch LO in safe mode, select “Configure” then “Disable Hardware Acceleration”. Hit “Apply Changes and Restart”. My thanks to EarnestAl for trying to help.

Bottom Line: Appears devs know hardware acceleration is a problem being written in OpenGL (which it never should have been) yet are stupid enough to have hardware acceleration enabled by default. GJ devs, GJ. slow clap

EarnestAl · March 15, 2022, 4:19am

If you don’t report it as a bug you will have to wait for someone else to report it otherwise the graphics card won’t end up on the opengl_denylist or skia_denylist.

Yes, those are on the denylist.

When you have reported the bug please comment back here with the bug number prefixed by tdf# to create the link.
Cheers, Al

EarnestAl · March 8, 2022, 6:59pm

Click Start menu - LibreOffice 7.3 - LibreOffice (safe mode) - Continue in safe mode.

LibreOffice will open in safe mode. Click Tools - Options - LibreOffice - View, under Graphics output untick the box that says Use Skia for all rendering and OK.

Close LibreOffice and then start normally. Cheers, Al

ket · March 8, 2022, 7:13pm

Thanks, I tried that but now it just crashes at the main LibreOffice window. EDIT: Just noticed that changes made in safe mode are not saved and reset themselves.

Further Updates:

LibreOffice 7.2.5 works fine on my PC, but still crashes on the laptop even with hardware acceleration disabled.
Tried disabling everything I can on the laptop in safe mode, no skia, no hardware acceleration, disabled Java and OpenCL, even disabled updates. Still crashing when trying to run LO normally. Rolling back to an even older build.

EarnestAl · March 8, 2022, 8:44pm

Safe Mode always starts with a new profile. I think that Skia does not play nicely with Ryzen, I would untick Skia in LO 7.2.5.2 anyway. This setting is saved when upgrading as user profile is not overwritten.

Did you have any error messages during install? See General Installation Issues (Windows) - The Document Foundation Wiki
Do you have anti-ransomware set in your anti-virus? You might have to add soffice.bin to your Allowed list. On a typical win10 install with 64 bit LO it is at "C:\Program Files\LibreOffice\program\soffice.bin". See Defender Controlled folder access exception for LibreOffice - The Document Foundation Wiki for Windows Defender but it doesn’t sound like Windows Defender action but might be another Anti-virus program action.
For the laptop. Normally, if LO works OK in Safe Mode then I would be inclined to reset the user profile, LibreOffice user profile - The Document Foundation Wiki .
Personally, I prefer the manual method of closing LO, renaming the user folder to userYYYYMMDD. Start LO and it will create a new user folder. Close LO and copy back the data folders like AutoCorrect, Wordbook, Templates, etc. Look at the list in the linked web page to determine which folders should be copied back, don’t copy back config though…

ket · March 8, 2022, 8:54pm

I’ll give those suggestions a shot before rolling back to an even older build on the laptop, there were no errors during the install and the log file isn’t overly helpful either it has detected CPU info extensions in it and the type of CPU but thats about it. Extremely surprised a word processing suit is this problematic to even just launch normally particularly in the case of my PC which is running an X570 Tomahawk, Radeon 6800XT, 32GB 3600MHz RAM and the latest build of Win10 with all updates and the hardware running with the latest drivers and firmware.

EDIT: For further reference I also have LibreOffice 7.3 on another laptop with a Ryzen 3 4300U and its running just fine.
EDIT2: Deleted user folder, LO still crashes when trying to launch it normally.
EDIT3: Disabled controlled folder access, ransomeware and prevented windows from scanning any files on the system by making the OS drive an exclusion, LO 7.3 and 7.2.5 still crashes on the laptop when trying to launch it normally.

ket · March 9, 2022, 1:07pm

So I’ve rolled all the way back to 7.1.8 and still LO crashes on the laptop, this is a totally clean install (by which I mean OS as well) with the LO folder in AppData > Roaming completely removed. Something is seriously wrong with LibreOffice I’ve tested it on 5 of my 7 systems now and 7.3 will only run on one of them, a Medion laptop with W10 Home x64, 8GB DDR4 and Ryzen 3 4300U. LO won’t even run on my high end main PC with Win10 Pro x64 which is as equally absurd as it is mind boggling. All other office suit software I’ve tested just trying to troubleshoot LO (MS Office and OpenOffice) work perfectly fine on all systems so this problem is unquestionably a problem with LO and the devs need to find and address it ASAP lest LO be cast to the curb by many in favour of office software that actually works and isn’t a bug addled mess. If anyone has any other suggestions I’ll give them a go but the devs need to look into this.

EarnestAl · March 9, 2022, 9:24pm

You might find this useful First steps to take before submitting a bug - The Document Foundation Wiki

ket · March 13, 2022, 3:08pm

Alright I will read that over. I’ve troubleshooted LO 7.3.1.3 on my main system and can say that the problem with it insta-crashing when selecting a module (doesn’t matter which one, writer, spreadsheet, etc) appears to be down to the hardware acceleration, I disabled that, along with the use AA option, and use skia option. Since disabling those LO, touch wood, seems to be ok (so far…). I’m yet to try again on the laptop. The only question remaining if it is indeed hardware acceleration causing the problem is why implement something that is so troublesome even on extremely modern systems? Troubleshooting LO these last several days has been by far the most irritating thing I’ve had to do in years and I’m an IT professional by trade dealing with driver, hardware, and all manner of software/windows bugs on a daily basis. Just have all hardware acceleration disabled by default and save people all the hassle.

EDIT: Tried LO 7.3.1 on the laptop again, still crashes, I can’t locate a configuration file to disable hardware acceleration, AA, and skia options directly for the regular LO launcher, starting LO in safe mode is useless as the options you change there don’t seem to carry over to the regular launcher. I’m pretty sure I’ve identified the crashing cause as being the hardware acceleration its written in OpenGL which besides being HEAVILY depreciated these days do the devs not know a lot of older intel IGPs have issues with OGL, and AMD hardware to this very day has OGL issues? Whatever the devs are using hardware acceleration for, do it in DirectX or don’t bother and at the very least have all hardware acceleration stuff disabled by default.

As I can’t disable these hardware options for the regular launcher on the laptop due to it crashing while loading to be 100% rather than “just” 99.99% certain I’m done debugging this software and I’m definitely not making Python changes and rewriting things in DirectX for them it was a stupid decision to use it over DX in the first place, the devs should be paying me to debug their mess at this point (and make no mistake, the code is a mess).

FINAL EDIT: Yup, the OGL is the culprit.

Hrbrgr · March 13, 2022, 6:37pm

@ket , Oh, you should definitely get in touch:

Developers

On this site here, users help other users, so your rant is out of place here, sorry.

In case you have a feature change request, please submit it on Bugzilla. Thanks.

Note: I removed her favorite word because otherwise I would have had to report it to the admin. Please remember that on this site also children and young people participate. Thank you.