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Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Error stdole32.tlb solved!



Last week, I encountered a very weird issue on my computer. I have a desktop with Windows Vista Ultimate and Microsoft Office 2007 Professional Plus. It has been working for a while until I decided to install Microsoft Visio 2007 and Microsoft Project 2007. Then my problems began.

Everytime I started an Office application, it would act as if it were installing that Office program all over again.



Even the Office files were unassociated--DOCX and DOC files would not open in Microsoft Word by default.

But the key to getting this error fixed had to be the error message that appears whenever I open up Microsoft Excel: stdole32.tlb.

So what I did first was to uninstall Microsoft Office and Microsoft Encarta. But that did not fix it. I did it a couple of times but to no avail. I was desperate. I thought my Norton Antivirus was causing the problem so I uninstalled it, reinstalled Microsoft Office and Microsoft Encarta before installing Norton Antivirus but it was still unresolved.

I then installed Windows Vista Service Pack 1, thinking it would fix the problem. That too didn't fix it. I was ready to format my hard drive and start from scratch.

But then I decided to search online for possible solutions to this problem. Maybe I wasn't alone after all. I then came across this site and it really helped me lot to get my computer working again.

It turns out that there were no groups or usernames that HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT in the registry could be provided permissions.



In the Registry Editor, checking on permissions on HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT should reveal something like this:



However, mine was special, and it did not have any groups or users that can be provided permissions:



The fix involved using the SubinACL tool available from Microsoft as a free download. It should install in C:\Program Files\Windows Resource Kits\Toolsby default.

Then I typed the following code in Notepad:

subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_CURRENT_USER /grant=administrators=f /grant=system=f /grant=restricted=r /grant=YOURUSERNAME=f /grant=restricted=r /setowner=administrators
subinacl /keyreg HKEY_CURRENT_USER /grant=administrators=f /grant=system=f /grant=restricted=r /grant=YOURUSERNAME=f /grant=restricted=r /setowner=administrators

subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE /grant=administrators=f /grant=system=f /grant=users=r /grant=everyone=r /setowner=administrators
subinacl /keyreg HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE /grant=administrators=f /grant=system=f /grant=users=r /grant=everyone=r /setowner=administrators

subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT /grant=administrators=f /grant=system=f /grant=users=r /setowner=administrators
subinacl /keyreg HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT /grant=administrators=f /grant=system=f /grant=users=r /setowner=administrators

replacing YOURUSERNAME with the computer username. After saving the file as officefix.cmd in the same path as where SubinACL was installed, I simply double-clicked on it and it repaired my registry.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

A big thanks

Unknown said...

Will this solve the same problem with Office 2010?

4ever7 said...

The Clicker ~ Yes, this should also work with Office 2010.

Anonymous said...

Working on a client's PC (after cleaning up a virus, so I'm not sure if that was the cause) and various uninstalls/reinstalls of Office later and it got worse to the point of doing something in windows explorer started up the Office installation popup window. Ran this script and all is well again. Word and excel open in seconds and Excel isn't complaining about the stdole32.tlb file any more. Many thanks for this.

Anonymous said...

not work, still on run we can see error message with stdole32.tlb

Anonymous said...

I too have encountered this stdole32.tlb situation, occuring everytime I try to Open MS Word & Excel 2007.
This was following installation of Office 2007 on Windows 8 (?) with AVG.
Over the weekend however,after I ran an AVG Update & Full Scan the Office apps appear to now open properly,ie without the std message.
This has been OK for the last couple of days, so I am carrying on, but not regardless.
No doubt something will go wrong somewhere

Chan said...

The solution worked for me, I have office 2007. Thank you very much

Unknown said...

I faced the same problem and I got solution from: http://www.microsoftsupportchat.com/blog/post/Office-2007-Excel-stdole-32-tlb-error/