COM Service slows down MS Office...?

From: James R. Twine (Twine_at_discussions.microsoft.com)
Date: 08/09/04 

Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2004 15:19:02 -0700

Hello all...

I have built a Win32 service that exposes a simple, single threaded,
automation-capable (IDispatch) interface. While the service is running, even
when idle, MS Office (Word, Excel, Frontpage, Internet Explorer etc.) take a
*long* time to launch and load when a cooresponding file is activated (for
example, by double-clicking on a DOC or XLS attachment to an email in
Outlook, or a file shown in an Explorer instance).

The applications launch normally (read: FAST) when started from a shortcut
directly to the executable. If the application is already running, then the
file double-clicked on opens up immediately.

The problem only happens when the service is running, regardless of its
activity. Times range anywhere from 1 to 3 minutes depending on the target
system. Happens with both RELEASE and DEBUG builds. The delay happens in
two parts; one delay to actually get the application launched (in the case of
Office applications), and another for the "data transfer" to take place to
open the intended file.

During the delay, the target executable has not yet been loaded (it is not
showing up in Task Manager), and there is no abnormal CPU activity. The
"originating" application (Outlook, Explorer, the Command Prompt if using the
"START" command) is unresponsive/hung during the delay (pumps no messages).
No applications appear to be silently launched or shutdown during the delay.

Strangely enough, other applications, Microsoft or otherwise, seem
unaffected by this problem. Some files, like TXT (Notepad), and BMP (Paint,
Picture Viewer), REG (Regedit), etc., appear to launch their cooresponding
executables normally/quickly.

Anti-Virus software does not play a part in this problem, nor does
ActiveSync. The problem persists regardless of the state of the system or
how recently it was rebooted. The delay is not consistent. Sometimes it
take a few seconds more or less. For example, the delay is much longer when
double-clicking a file than when using the "START" command on the same file.

The problem has been replicated on different Windows versions (2K
Professional, XP Professional, NT40 Workstation). It happens with MS Office
2002 (XP); I have not yet confirmed if it happens with later versions.

Has anyone ever seen any behavior even close to this?

Thank you for your time.

-=- James R. Twine

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