Virtualizing Office Communicator 2005 (1.0.559.225)

jdulle's picture
jdulle
June 12th, 2009

Has anyone created SVS layer for Office Communicator 2005?  I created this layer about a year ago its Office Communicator with a patch bringing the version to 1.0.559.225.  I have used it with Office 2003 for the last 10 months and it has worked just fine.  When we moved to Office 2007 I started having issues.  The error indicates that the .ost file is in use by another program and cannot be accessed.  Its described in this MS article http://support.microsoft.com/kb/943590.  This is our setup Office 2007 SP1 with Office Communicator 2005 but simply restarting the machine does not fix the problem.  The two programs will get into a loop where outlook crashes and when you restart it than communciator will crash and when you restart outlook crashes etc.  It happens sporadically on my machine.  I can get it fixed eventually by fiddling with it long enough (deactivate/activate, reset, reinstall, launch in different order) but the whatever I do to fix it is not consistent.  I have had it working for a couple of days now with no problems but have put the package on some of my coworkers machines and they have the same issue.  So MS says its a known issue during the install of Office 2007 but not anything about it being an ongoing issue.  My SVS package seems to have exasperated the issue has anyone had similar problems with these two installs?  Oh and Office 2007 is not virtualized. 

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Gene Kupfer's picture
Gene Kupfer
23 weeks 1 day ago

I have not tested this, but...

  • Have you tried a conventional install of Communicator 2005 on the same box as Office 2007 to see if you have the same problem?
  • If the conventional install works fine, go back to the machine with the layer. If you deactivate the Communicator layer and Office 2007 starts working fine, try adding an exclusion for the files held "in use" or their directories described in the MS KB. This won't necessarily stop the layer from locking files it thinks it needs, but worth a try.
  • Create a new Communicator layer.
  • Try a layer with Communicator 2007.

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jdulle's picture
jdulle
22 weeks 6 days ago

I have not tested this, but...

Convential install on the same machine does not have problems. I will give exclusions a shot.

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jdulle's picture
jdulle
22 weeks 4 days ago

Files are not part of package

Ths files mentioned in the MS article are actually part of OS not part of the package so they cannot be excluded from the package.  I recaptured this on a machine with Office 2007 installed in hopes that may solve issue but not luck.  I have the same problesm with the newly captured Office Communicator package.  Has anyone ever virtualized Communicator with successes?  I do have it working ok on two machines but the majority of the machines the layer is imported on continue to crash Outlook than Communicator.

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Gene Kupfer's picture
Gene Kupfer
22 weeks 4 days ago

I'll ask around

I'll see if anyone has more info on this. We may just have to test this. :)
I'll keep you posted.

 

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Gopinath Muniyandi's picture
Gopinath Muniyandi
18 weeks 5 days ago

Unable to reproduce

We tested it out and didn’t experience any app crash problem.

Here is what we tried to reproduce this issue:

1. Installed Office 2003 conventionally and upgraded to Office 2007.
2. Activated application layer of Microsoft Office Communicator 2005 (V 1.0.559)
3. Both app functioned with out any crash, also restarted it few time to see if it make any change. I was able to launch all app with Office package.

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