Restored backup breaks MS Office.

[Kurt Lang]

Having a problem with Super Duper 2.1.1 under OS X 10.4.6.

I have two internal SATA drives. The original is partitioned in half. The other, added later, is a single volume. There are also two external FireWire 800 drives from OWC. Actually, I purchased the enclosures and installed my own drives. These are each broken into two volumes for various purposes. One one external, I have a minimal install of OS X with all of my disk utilities (Disk Warrior, Drive Genius, etc.). Mainly used to do maintenence and cloning of the other drives. The second external has a volume for near line backup of images for my work and my clone backup of the main internal drive on the other partition.

I started up to the minimal install of OS X on the 1st external drive. This to ensure the drive I was cloning was not in use as the boot volume. Don't know if it makes a difference to Super Duper to do this. Anyway, I then used the Smart Update option of the registered version to create the initial clone on the 2nd external drive.

Everything was fine. I could install any software for testing I wanted and after I was done playing around, I would boot to the minimal OS X install and Smart Update the clone on the second external back to the main drive. All would be back to the way it was and working perfectly.

Now the problem. If I startup to the cloned volume on the 2nd external, even if I don't do anything while on that drive and later do a Smart Update (or even a full copy) back to the main internal drive, all of the Office applications are broken. None will launch. I get the Microsoft Error Reporting box on all four apps. These are the only apps affected.

I've tried restoring the entire Office folder from a known good .dmg backup created with Disk Utility. This doesn't help. Neither does removing the entire Microsoft preferences folder, or its font caches.

I have a feeling this is Tiger related rather than Super Duper. The reason being is that I also tried the same procedures with Carbon Copy Cloner. As soon as I boot to the backup drive, then the main drive cannot be restored so Office works.

Any idea what's going on? Is there a particular file that needs to be removed in order to fix the issue?

Thanks.

[dnanian]

I've not seen this here, unfortunately -- I don't know why it would be any different between your two drives... what does it look like is crashing in the error log you receive?

[Kurt Lang]

Correction. Only Word and Entourage won't launch. Those are the two I normally use, so hadn't bothered to check PowerPoint and Excel.

I'm in the process of restoring an older Disk Utility .dmg file, which will be followed by doing a Smart Update from my backup volume. I'm hoping that'll straighten things out. I'll let you know. But I do know that they both said at the top something about BAD_EXEC.

Thanks for the response, Dave.

[Kurt Lang]

The initial reinstall of the old .dmg file fixed the Office apps. Upon restoring the image on the backup drive, they were broken again. The really dumb part is that if I startup to the backup volume, Word and Entourage work. But booting to the drive breaks its abiltiy to create a working clone back to the main drive.

Here's part of the crash logs from Word and Entourage.

Word

Error Signature:
Exception: EXC_BAD_ACCESS
Date/Time: 2006-05-31 16:53:43 -0500
Application Name: Microsoft Word
Application Version: 11.2.3.060202
Module Name: Microsoft_Office_2001Z
Module Version: 11.2.3.060202
Module Offset: 0x00013680
Extra app info: Reg=English Loc=0x0409

Thread 0 crashed:

Operating System Information
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.4.6 (Build 8I127)
CPU: G5 (970), Number: 2, Speed: 2000 MHz
gestaltPhysicalRAMSize err = 0, result = 2047 MB
gestaltSystemVersion err = 0, result = 0x1046
Screen: 1600 x 1200, depth = 32, ltbr = 0, 0, 1200, 1600

Microsoft Application Information:
Error Reporting UUID: 358A20D8-629A-11DA-A677-000D93447764
Time from launch: 0 hours, 0 minutes, 0 seconds
Total errors on this client: 3

Entourage

Exception: EXC_BAD_ACCESS
Date/Time: 2006-05-31 16:58:07 -0500
Application Name: Microsoft Entourage
Application Version: 11.2.3.060209
Module Name: Microsoft Entourage
Module Version: 11.2.3.060209
Module Offset: 0x00252b70
Extra app info: Reg=English Loc=0x0409

Thread 0 crashed:

Operating System Information
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.4.6 (Build 8I127)
CPU: G5 (970), Number: 2, Speed: 2000 MHz
gestaltPhysicalRAMSize err = 0, result = 2047 MB
gestaltSystemVersion err = 0, result = 0x1046
Screen: 1600 x 1200, depth = 32, ltbr = 0, 0, 1200, 1600

Microsoft Application Information:
Error Reporting UUID: 358A20D8-629A-11DA-A677-000D93447764
Time from launch: 0 hours, 0 minutes, 0 seconds
Total errors on this client: 5

[dnanian]

OK: there's not much there, unfortunately, because the actual calls it's crashing in are missing. Do you have the actual traceback from thread 0?

[Kurt Lang]

Nuts! I thought I had saved the entire text for both crashes to another location. Didn't paste it all here because they greatly exceeded the allowed number of characters.

Well, I'm currently writing a new backup to my external. What I'll do tomorrow is first create a .dmg file with Super Duper to the other external so I have a backup that will (should) restore correctly. Then boot to my backup external (which I know will goof up Word and Entourage) and do a Smart Update to the main drive. From there, I'll get the entire text and send them to you as email attachments.

Thanks.

[dnanian]

Yeah -- send them into the support email address, rather than here in the Forums. I'll take a look, and you can post a summary here if you'd like when we're done in the "back room".

[Kurt Lang]

Found the problem/solution, Dave.

After creating my backups, I booted to the main drive and did nothing. Then I booted to the external backup I just created and did nothing. Started up to the other external and did a Smart Copy from the 2nd external to the main drive. Out of 144,599 files examined, 187 were copied to the main drive. Upon booting to the main drive, Word and Entourage were once again broken.

Since I hadn't even launched either app on the external backup, it had to be something else. So I went into Onyx and removed the swap file along with every single cache and system log file. Restarted, and Word and Entourage were happy again.

So while I don't know why these two apps would be so sensitive to the state of a cache file, they apparently are. I wasn't about to start over and remove them one at a time to get the exact cache file. The shotgun approach works just fine for me.

Thanks!

[dnanian]

That's really strange: it doesn't seem to happen here, Kurt. I wonder what the difference is, or what cache is causing problems? (You had already indicated you deleted the font cache -- did you delete both the system cache and Office's?)

[Kurt Lang]

What I did originally was delete the two Office specific caches at:

~/Library/Caches/.com.microsoft.browserfont.cache

~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/Office Font Cache (11)

Removing only those didn't help. I should have tried using Onyx or Font Finagler to remove the rest of the font caches to see if that was the problem. Likely, since that's really the main tie between Word and Entourage as far as system files go. Though that doesn't explain then why PowerPoint and Excel weren't affected.

I do have the crash logs for both apps before fixing them. I'll email those to you for a look see. I can't read the things, but I bet you can.

[dnanian]

Well, no promises, but if there are enough symbols in there I can get an idea. I'll watch for them.

[Kurt Lang]

Just wanted to say, "Thanks". Your help is appreciated.

I was working from a somewhat incomplete restore when I did my testing earlier today. So after I got Final Cut Studio and a couple other small things reinstalled, I cleared the font caches with Font Finagler before creating my final backup. So time will tell if booting to the external goofs up Word and Entourage again on the main.

[dnanian]

Yep; clearing the system font cache and the launch services database will both be interesting...

[MacOfTheEast]

Just a word to the wise: Microsoft Office stores its preferences (file locations) as absolute paths as opposed to relative paths. Therefore, if you boot from your backup drive AND IT HAS A DIFFERENT NAME THAN YOUR ORIGINAL DRIVE Microsoft Office won't be able to find any of it's preference or support files and it's behavior will be unpredictable. So... if you can, rename your secondary drive to the same name as your original drive (sometimes possible especially if you've removed your original drive) or once you start up MS Office go immediately to it's preferences and reconfigure it's FILE LOCATIONS tab.

MOTE
________
CBF500

[dnanian]

I think they've improved this behavior, MOTE, and it'll default to the normal locations if it can't find them where they were. The font cache, though, has been known to cause lots of problems...