[Solved] soffice.bin using all processor capacity

[seanspotatobusiness]

I have just installed OOo 3.0 and am finding that soffice.bin is using 100% of my processor, making the OOo programs unacceptably slow to respond. If I close the OOo program(s) in use, including the Quickstarter, then I can open a file and work again as normal. The trigger for the event is currently unknown to me. Suggestions?

Memory usage was fluctuating between 400 and 460 MB, even though I had only one 400 KB presentation file open. The madness continued with only the Quickstarter running, even though the presentation I was working on had been closed.

[Hagar Delest]

The Quickstarter has sometimes problems indeed. Personally, I always shut it down. On recent machines, no real need of it.

[seanspotatobusiness]

Well, with Quickstarter closed and any program (or at least Writer or Presentation) open, then the problem persists.

Is there any way to find out what soffice.bin is actually doing? That would help to analyse the problem.

[Hagar Delest]

soffice.bin is the main OOo process. Make sure there is only one (should have also a soffice.exe but not more). Perhaps an anti-virus preventing OOo from running?

[seanspotatobusiness]

There is only a single instance of the processes running.

Reducing anti-virus (BitDefender) real-time protection to minimum appears to remove the problem. I have returned real-time protection to normal and added openoffice.bin and openoffice.exe to list of exceptions. I am not sure to what extent this is a compromise in security.

[Philip_Timms]

Hi

i have had the same problem with Openoffice and Bitdefender. I have taken your advice and put the soffice .bin, .exe and .ini files in the exceptions list in the antivirus section of Bitdefender - and so far, it seems to work. I'm hoping the security risk is relatively small. Thanks very much for this

Philip Timms

[Philip_Timms]

Oops, I talked too soon.

While marking the soffice files as exeptions in Bidefender seemed to work for Writer, it did not at all for Calc - I was, within 2 minutes, up to nearly 2Gig of Ram used. It cleared rapidly when I shut down the 2 spreadsheets (which were not large).

So still a problem.

Does anybody know if this is been taken seriously anywhere, because it is becoming enough to drive me back to Microsoft .......?

Philip Timms

[Philip_Timms]

Sorry

PS, I'm using Windows XP SP3 and Openoffice 3 and an up to date copy of Bitdefender. No similar problems with any other programmes, I'm using the Bitdefender package for real time protection and Spyware doctor for regular scans.

Philip Timms

[Philip_Timms]

OK, problem solved - it's a Java issue. Specifically it seems that the update 10 of Java 6 sent my Openoffice into a flat spin. I have uninstalled all the other versions of Java lurking o my computer and now just have the revision 7 installed by Openoffice.

[thomasjk]

Its not necessarily Java update 10. This issue can be caused by Comodo firewall. I'm running 10 and I don't see this issue with OOo V3.0 on XPSP3.

[Philip_Timms]

You are right Tom K - getting the Java sorted out merely delayed the inevitable rise in memory use. Maybe I should have another look at Bitdefender if this thing can be caused by a firewall ....

[Philip_Timms]

OK, really solved this time. I have put the 2 Java.exe files (in the \program files\java\...... and the windows\system32 directories) in the Bitdefender firewall rules list - and now all really does seem to be well. I apologise for my fragmented and somewhat undisciplined posts.

[thomasjk]

Things are not always what they seem. Glad you got it fixed.

[dreamgear]

I'm having the same problem, and it even happens when all parts of bitdefender are completely disabled.
I'm going to try another (xp) system to see if I get the same results - this one is running Vista.

I've never had Bitdefender do this to any other software, which isn't to say I've never had any problems with it, just that I've never seen it cause a process to become compute-bound.

[thomasjk]

Comodo firewall is also known to cause this type of issue. See this thread http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic ... ght=comodo.

[Philip_Timms]

Hi Everybody

In spite of my earlier optimism (problem solved - not), memory use continued to unpredictably run away with itself so that my machine would grind to a halt. So, I installed the development version of OO 3.1 and ...... a miracle - no more memory problems. I know development versions aren't guaranteed to be stable but, I have to say, this version runs much better on my machine than 3.0. But I still don't know exactly what the problem was ....

[TheGurkha]

OK, Thanks for the update. Please keep an eye on it and report back with any new findings.

[franky69]

I had the same Problem with OO and Bitdefender 2009. I uninstall all java versions, except version 7. After that, I was asked to install a new version of java and I did. Now all seems to work fine. Nice greetings Frank

[korpheus]

Has anyone actually determined the real real real problem? I tried basically franky69's last post ... uninstalling Java except for v 7, etc... I thought it worked, but i was right back to the insane 90% CPU usage for soffice.bin a couple of days later. I don't really want to start playing with my BitDefender settings unless I know I'm still safe, and loading beta versions of Open Office just sounds like a bandaid, especially considering that I don't have the programming experience (read - no exp whatsoever) to play around with it if there's a problem. Has anyone figured out for certain what the problem is? Is it BitDefender, Java or Open Office? Maybe they're just programs that are incompatible... like if you use Open Office, don't use Bitdefender (or vice versa).

[cam2174]

FYI My antivirus is AVAST, I am saving everything as an OO document (.odt)
I am having the same problem of soffice.bin using most of my CPU (between 78 and 98%) when I save a 40 page document of 380K document. It takes about 15 seconds to save the 380K document (I timed it). I tried removing all text, frames etc so that I had a blank document but properties says the document size is 339K and statistics are 1 page, 0 characters, 0 words etc. The amount of memory soffice.bin uses gradually increases from a start of 22K to 180K each time I open and close a writer document of any size)

I closed the "blank" document and opened a small calc document and it saved in a second or so and the soffice.bin size decreased to 19K. I did this twice and it worked but the third time it did not decrease the memory usage. I have opened and closed writer several times but no difference in soffice.bin memory usage (still 150K)

I can't remember for sure but I think the problem with soffice.bin excess CPU usage (only when I save an OO writer document) started when I installed endnotex3. Initially everything went well but then (maybe since making a TOC with hyperlinks) at some point deleting or inserting new citations causes all sorts of strange things to happen. But, this is a separate problem and I mention it as it may relate to the soffice problem.) I also updated from 3.0 to 3.1 recently but I don't remember when in this sequence of events. May have been weeks before problems began.

I stripped out all the formatting and I used the backwards paragraph icon to look for any spaces or paragraphs etc and there is only one paragraph symbol. The size is 339K! Still took 5 seconds to save the "blank" document.

I can't attach a sample because even the blank document exceeds the allowed space. I tried uploading to mediafire but it just gets hung up and never gets past 1% of file uploaded and then finally they dropped me from the site.
Thanks for any help,
Jan