Friday, October 24, 2014

Disk cleanup crashes on SharePoint 2013 server

This is a wired one…
I have 2 SP2013 servers, I installed the desktop experience feature to get the disk cleanup utility to clean up some disk space.
It runs perfectly on all my servers except one. On that one it crashed as soon as I tried opening it and gave me this error message:
“Disk Space Cleanup Manager has stopped working”
“a problem caused the program to stop working correctly”
The internet had nothing helpful to say, except one fixit tool that applied only to windows xp.
Opened the windows application logs and got this interesting error:
-------------------
Faulting application name: cleanmgr.exe, version: 6.1.7600.16385, time stamp: 0x4a5bc995
Faulting module name: mso.dll, version: 15.0.4659.1001, time stamp: 0x5423c9a5
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x00000000002e45b9
Faulting process id: 0x18a8
Faulting application start time: 0x01cfefb40cac6155
Faulting application path: C:\Windows\system32\cleanmgr.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Office15\mso.dll
Report Id: 4a772d57-5ba7-11e4-9aa1-00505630df35 -------------
Hm… I looked for this file under Office15 and it wasn’t on any of the other servers. Infact, that folder was almost empty in the other servers, but on this server it had many files.
Now, I don’t have office installed on the server, so I hit start, types “office” and the only thing I found was SharePoint Designer was installed on this machine.
It became my immediate suspect. You know how after you install any office product, you have that first time welcome wizard when you launch it? So, I suspected this application was never launched and the wizard never run.
I launched it, clicked next through the wizard and tried disk cleanup utility again – and this time it run as expected.
I thought this one was worth sharing…

Updates from comments I got suggests many other Microsoft applications needs to be launched at least once after installation or they can cause the disk cleanup to crash. Mainly:
  • Outlook
  • Word, Excel and/or PowerPoint (you only need to launch one)
  • SQL client tools
  • Visual Studio
Leave a comment if you had this issue caused by other application, I'll update this post

21 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oddly enough, I had the exact same issue. For people looking for this wizard, it can be started under the following path:
[install drive]\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office15\FIRSTRUN.EXE

Ian said...

Just saved me a good half hour (or probably more) of trying to figure out what the problem was. So thanks for posting this.

Anonymous said...

Thank you, this was a stinker and you saved me a few hours hunting it down.

Anonymous said...

Thanks. I launched Word, closed it, and Disk Cleanup started working again.

Anonymous said...

I had installed the SQL 2008 Client tools, had not launched it. I did that and it fixed the issue.

busrid3r said...

Thank you! That fixed it. Just had to run SharePoint Designer 2013, click through the welcome wizard. What a bizarre issue.

FYI - I have Office 2013 suite installed along with several Office 2010 products (InfoPath, SharePoint Designer).

I was trying to run Disk Cleanup under an admin account which had never previously run SP Designer.

I had previously run SP Designer under my non-admin account. the non-admin account cannot run Disk Cleanup though.

Kludge said...

Indeed you are correct, sir.

Thank you.

Anonymous said...

Perfect, I startet Word and it Work :) THX

Anonymous said...

Thinks for this info. I had to open outlook before it would let me run Disk Clean up.

Shai Petel said...

Thanks for all the comments, I will update the post with other possible applications!

Anonymous said...

Yeah worked for me too, opened up Outlook and Word and it was fine. What a weird bug :S

Anonymous said...

Thank you! Weird and annoying issue! Started Word and now the error stopped appearing (Windows 8.1).

Anonymous said...

Wow...did the trick Awesome.....

Anonymous said...

Driving me nuts after numerous Windows Updates followed up with performing the Disk Cleanup where eventually the appcrash. I manually ran the FirstRun.exe and all working again. Ran debugger with Visual Studio and saw the MSO.dll had issues. Previously ran Office before under this local account, but again, the FirstRun.exe manual launch cleared up further errors running Disk Cleanup now. Thanks a lot!

Unknown said...

Yep same here, launched Excel and all was good again... Amazing stuff!!

Anonymous said...

Hello,

Thank you for this valuable post. I could not find anything about this error except here, and the minute I opened Word, the error was fixed. Probably is one of the strangest fixes ever, but it worked.

Anonymous said...

Insane......... also started Word, closed it, and bang, Disk cleanup started working....... 2 days banging with my head..........
It's unreal that Microsoft hasn't released a patch for this shit.......

Carl said...

Great find author, thanks for sharing. This was driving me crazy and I never would have found the fix.

Disk Clean up not working on Windows 7 workstation when running as Administrator. Run the "FirstRun.Exe" for office 15 and all good again.

Bizarre error.

Anonymous said...

Thanks much:
[install drive]\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office15\FIRSTRUN.EXE

fixed the issue. I never would have found this. Nice work!

Anonymous said...

Yep. Running FirstRun.exe fixed it. Although I must say I was using Word Lync already while this crash was happenning. So must be some other Microsoft application. Hence runnign this unifying firstrun.exe is helpful. Thanks a bunch.

Anonymous said...

I ran the Office repair from within Control Panel, this also solved the problem after server was rebooted