Access Violation Errors - General information and workarounds 

Topic T1167 Applies to All NEO Products



Description

This Knowledge Base article provides some general information on Access Violation errors and provides possible workarounds if they occur.
NOTE: Identified technical causes generating these errors will be taken into account for next releases of our NEO products - this is an ongoing activity to make them less vulnerable for these errors.


General information

Make sure you run the latest version of your NEO product: within NEO go to Help | Check for Updates. If a newer version is available, download and install this version before continuing with below.

Access Violations errors in general are of incidental nature and can be triggered by a wide range of causes most of which are benign issues.
Due to the incidental nature, it is mostly not possible to force this error again even not when repeating same chain of events which triggered the error.
In most cases it is possible to continue to use NEO without further action.
Otherwise, close and restart NEO to resolve the error. In rare cases a system reboot may be needed.


Possible workarounds

When an AV error shows when starting NEO, try a reset of the NEO Pro user interface.
- Close NEO
- Start NEO while holding Ctrl+Shift keys and confirm dialog to reset the UI; if no dialog shows, close NEO and try again with the Ctrl+Shift keys

If not successful, do the following:
- Close Outlook and NEO
- Open system registry: Run, Regedit
- For NEO Pro browse to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Caelo Software\NEO Pro\9.0\UIState; For NEO Find browse to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Caelo Software\NEO Find\5.0\UIState
- Rename or delete this branch
- Then start Outlook and NEO Pro or NEO Find again


If AV errors are more than incidental, restarting the program or, if more persistent, a reboot of the system will mostly be enough to clear the issue.

When Access Violations occur while having Conversation View on, please rebuild the Conversation Index from the Catalog menu.

If afterwards these continue to occur more than incidental a Catalog rebuild - usually reserved for database errors - will most likely clear the problem.


Corrective actions for incidental AV errors

As stated above Access Violation errors can have many causes.
The following knowledge base articles have in certain cases provided a solution and reduced or eliminated occurrences:

For Access Violation errors when running in Conversation View (use Alt+V to toggle this view on/off) you can try to improve using the following:
- in NEO Pro go to Tools, Options then Miscellaneous tab
- in Conversation Settings uncheck the first item and click OK to exit


Corrective actions for fatal AV errors

Access violations may arise from install and setup of NEO for seemingly no reason. This may occur on Windows XP service pack 2 or greater or Windows Server 2003 service pack 1 or greater. The effects are benign for the PC but NEO simply may not run.
Alternatively, in very rare cases and mostly after a series of repeating AV errors, an Access Violation error can become a fatal error during startup.
Also in this case rebooting the system or forcing a rebuild of the Catalog might resolve the problem. Please refer to T1007/T1008 through the links provided above for instructions to rebuild the Catalog. In these KB articles also the procedure is contained to start NEO in a non-Catalog state in case NEO fails to start while opening the catalog.

When a rebuild of the Catalog as described in T1007/T1008 is not solving the problem or when NEO can simply not be started without generating an AV error, uninstalling and forcing a clean install of NEO Pro or NEO Find will, in most cases, resolve the problem. As the catalog can be maintained during the uninstall no lengthy synchronization is needed after reinstalling the product.

Perform the following to force a clean install of NEO Pro or NEO Find:
 1) Export your current layout settings: within NEO go to View | Layout | Export...
2) Take note of your licensing details under Help | License as you will need to reenter this information later on.
3) Uninstall NEO from Control Panel, Programs (keep the catalogs when prompted during the uninstall).
4) Remove the install directory C:\Program Files (x86)\NEO Pro or C:\Program Files (x86)\NEO Find (if still existing)
5) Remove entries of NEO from the computer registry:

- Open the computer registry (Start - Run - Regedit)
- Browse to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Caelo Software
- Remove (or rename) this Caelo Software registry branch - make sure to only delete this branch.

6) Install NEO Pro or NEO Find again; enter your licensing information again when prompted.
7) You can now import your layout settings again.
After installing the existing catalog can be opened again (within NEO click the Application Button or go to the File Menu, then Catalog | Open Catalog).



Last updated: 10 January 2024