Vista SP1 causing random app crashes for some users

On the Microsoft TechNet forums, a handful of users began reporting (in early April) that after installing Windows Vista SP1 various applications would stop launching and instead gave the error "Not a valid Win32 application." Users found that Excel would often spit this message out and if they tried running it under administrative rights, the error would change to "Insufficient system resources exist to complete the requested service."

Most often it would be Microsoft Office applications crashing, but reinstalling the suite did not fix the problem. The issue, which does not occur every time the application is launched, happens to a select number of users regardless of whether Windows Vista SP1 was rolled out on a fresh install of Windows Vista or not.

Victims of the problem tried to find a workaround and eventually concluded that it is a resource leak that could only be temporarily fixed by logging off and back on every time it occurs. Almost three weeks after the problem was first reported, a moderator posted the following message in the topic:

Microsoft is aware of this issue and is working on a fix. As several people have observed, this is konwn (sic) to affect Excel 2007, Access 2007, Snipping Tool, and Windows Media Player on Vista SP1. The fix is to either exit as many apps as possible that you are running (e.g. Outlook), and then load the app (and then you can reload the apps you had running), or a logoff/logon will clear it up for a while (days/weeks). The error messages are confusing, but the problem is neither an invalid application file nor insufficient system resources. It only affects certain applications, and typically only after the user has been logged in for an extended period of time.

It is impossible to say how many users this problem is affecting. Thankfully, it does not happen every time and the suggested workaround is simple, although a bit time-consuming. If you're experiencing the problem and have new information, I'm sure Microsoft would appreciate if you posted in the thread linked below.

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