[ms office - 2010] PowerPoint 2010 and Images

[LansITGuy]

Hi all.

 

I'm posting this here as a bit of a last resort. We have an occasional issue which just keeps popping up that I can't track down.

 

Sometimes when a pupil attempts to copy and paste an image from Google Images / Bing Images into a PowerPoint slide, PowerPoint 2010 just locks up. The only way out of it is to task manager and close PowerPoint. This seems to affect random users on random computers.

 

Some notes:

• All computers are of the same base image and updates managed by WSUS
  
• All pupils are on the same GPOs and have the same mandatory profile
  
• I have used multiple pupil accounts on multiple PCs and I can't replicate the error
  

 

So far I've tried:

• Re-installing base image
  
• Repairing and reinstalling Office 2010
  
• Tested different types of images to see if one file type is causing the issue (JPEG, GIF, PNG, etc)
  
• Checked NTFS permissions on the MS Office folders and I've had issues in the past with that.
  

 

The fact that I can't replicate it is annoying. When I check the event logs, there is no information connected to the issue, not even a faulting application entry. I'm totally out of ideas and this is starting to lead to issues with the ICT department.

 

Thanks in advance for any ideas.

[Paradoxism]

Have you tried leaving the PowerPoint open for a long time to see if it EVER unlocks? Sounds like it may be a memory issue maybe with large images running out of resources? If it is locking because of memory then it may not see it as an error (as it is just taking time) and therefore not write anything to the logs?

[LansITGuy]

Thanks for the idea. I had thought of that, but you know what some pupils can be like. Given how long it can take for the message to get over to me I would have hoped that any short term locking of PowerPoint would have cleared.

 

As an update, we seem to have a weird rule on our filter (Lightspeed) to do with SSL and Google. This caused issues with some apps not updating in Android. Since changing that rule for testing I haven't had any complaints about PowerPoint and inserting images. I'm wondering if the two are related, but I won't know until I am sure that a full lesson of using PowerPoint in this way has taken place. Its a bit of a long shot, but you never know.